Breaking Out
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Rural Media's Breaking Out program is making strides in addressing youth behaviour through creative engagement in Herefordshire schools. A youth participation project, Herefordshire High-Schoolers have been creating impactful social media content with an aim to create powerful short clips about positive masculinity, healthy behaviours, personal safety and productive role modelling.
The Breaking Out project - developed with insight and input from national experts, policies, local authorities and, crucially, rural young people - is co-funded by Herefordshire Council and West Mercia Police as it ultimately seeks to reduce exploitation and vulnerability, violence against women and girls (VAWG); peer-on-peer abuse (physical, emotional, verbal, direct and indirect) in schools and domestic abuse by empowering and up skilling young people to recognise and safely tackle misogynistic attitudes and harmful behaviours online and in real life before they enter young adulthood.
Over the last 6 months, we've been working with 20 boys aged 12-15 at Fairfield High School and The Bishop of Hereford's Bluecoat School, to employ digital content creation to explore themes of gender stereotypes and safety, role models, friendship and behaviour with participants producing films and audio content designed to counter negative social media messaging. The program is scheduled to conclude in May 2025, with plans to disseminate the participants' content on social media platforms to reach wider youth audiences.
