Statistics On Young People Voting

• The green 'Electorate' section on the chart is the amount of people eligible to vote and the red 'Turnout' is the proportion of those people who did vote. 
• The highest recorded turnout for an election was in 1910.
• The country with the highest turnout is generally Wales and the country with the lowest turnout is usually Northern Ireland.

• Since 1964 you can see there was a decline in the turnout of people aged 18-24 voting in the General Election, however in 2010 there was a significant rise in young persons turnout compared to the previous election.

• The chart above shows the turnout of young people at General elections compared to all of the older eligible voters.
• It is clear that the young voters are the minority ad especially in 1997-2010 the amount of young voters compared to the rest of the voters is considerably less.
• I think this may be linked to the fact that as the world becomes more modern and teenagers have a lot more to engage in, the thought of voting and being interested in politics is almost unconsidered. Therefore, I think it is extremely necessary to create and get involved with campaigns to encourage young people to start voting otherwise the amount of young voters will inevitably continue to decrease. 

Aliyah Dar. (03/07/2013) Elections: Turnout [online]. Availible at: www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN01467.pdf.  [Accessed 02/01/2015]

Multipage Doc Questionnaire Results

Using Survey Monkey I created a questionnaire to find out what young peoples opinions on multipage documents are in order for me to take on information about how I can design my political multipage document to interest young people.

21.3% of the 14 people I gave the survey to are old enough to vote. The other 78.7% are not yet eligible to vote but are all eligible to vote. Therefore I still find their opinions on what they want to see in a multipage document helpful as in a short amount of time they will have the chance to vote, and young people should be encouraged to vote and understand voting from as young as possible so they know what to do when the time comes.

57.1% of the people I collected results from were male and the other 42.9% were female. This is a fairly even balance, enough for the results to be unbiased when discovering the most popular magazine in the sample of young people.

No one in the sample of young people read magazines daily, which is a likely result as most magazines are released weekly or monthly. Only 7.1% of the sample reads a magazine weekly and 28.6% read a magazine monthly. The fact that over quarter of the sample I asked read a magazine monthly shows that it's likely they would still be interested in engaging in a multipage document even though there is large amounts of information about anything you want to know online and on the television. Although over half of the people in the sample rarely read magazines, by looking at the results of what interests them about a multipage document, it is possible to create a document that they will be drawn to and engage in the information that the document includes.

I asked the sample what their magazine of choice is in order to choose a magazine to look at as part of a focus group. I was expecting for more than one person to like any specific magazine but my results show that everyone in the sample has a different magazine of choice. However there are similarities with the genres of the magazines. 42.6% of the sample would choose a women's gossip/fashion magazine and two people from the sample prefer music magazines. From these results, for my focus group focusing on the appeal of magazines, I will choose a popular women's magazine and a popular music magazine.

Half of the sample prefer magazines with more images than text and just under half of the sample prefer and equal balance of text and images and only 1 person prefers mostly text. To me this information tells me that my document should have lots of images but enough text to make the point of the images clear and relevant.

Just two more people in the sample prefer vibrant colour over subtle complimentary colour, so in terms of colour on my multipage document I will experiment with different designs, some with brighter colours and some where the colours are more subtle. Choosing the colour scheme may come naturally when choosing the images for the document, I think the colours used should compliment the colours in any photographs or images so nothing clashes.

Just under three quarters of the sample haven't ever seen or read a political document however over a quarter of them have. The people who haven't read one may find them uninteresting or unappealing. If a political multipage document was aimed specifically at young people they may show more interest and engagement.





As a conclusion of my questionnaire results I have decided that I would like to make a magazine aimed at females as my political document. From my results, the most popular magazines are women's magazines therefore I think women would be more likely to pick up and read a magazine. I decided against making a leaflet as people often see them as rubbish and throw them away as soon as they receive them and I decided against an online publication as most teenagers go to the internet go to the internet to escape and have fun so they would rather be on social media or watching video clips whilst online rather than reading information about politics.

Young Persons Voting Reports

In the last general election, only 44% of eligible young voters actually took their opportunity to vote, so no wonder young people are being highly encouraged to take the opportunity to vote if they have it. 

All young people should be required to vote in the first election they're eligible to vote in (IPPR cited by BBC. 2013)  The IPPR think tank may want to make it a policy that eligible voters should vote at their first legal election so that they're aware of what the process is so that they don't shy away from it or decide against voting at an older age. At least if they vote at their first legal election and feel that it wasn't right for them, they have a valid reason not to vote again rather than just being uneducated about the process. 

The Daily Mail Online (2014)say that 59% percent of teenagers won't vote in the 2015 election because they think politicians only care about celebrities, pensioners and successful business people. They also asked young people who would do the best job at running the country and the result of this question was Ed Milliband, the leader of the Labour party. If when asked unofficially who young people think should run the country an answer is given, then all of these young people with an opinion should vote in the election so that they're voice can be heard. If young people leave the voting to the rich and famous then they aren't taking their chance to make a change.

In the video above you can watch Tv's Rick Edwards Ted talk about how to encourage young people to vote. Previous to the talk he did research to discover what teenagers currently thought about politics and voting and from this research he discovered that most teenagers are just lacking in facts and information about parties and their policies. When Rick himself realised that he was little help to the young people when it came to informing them about where they could find out political information, he decided that he should make a change in order to increase the amount of young voters in the 2015 election.




To make a change, Rick has taken it upon himself, with some help, to create a VAA app for 2015's young voters to help them learn about parties and their policies as well as taking a survey to find out which party they should consider voting for based on which policies they agree with and support the most. (Rick Edwards 2014)

As a popular television personality with young people, this app could be a very successful break through to increase the amount of young voters as they will be able to easily access the information they may have previously spent ages scouring the web for, and the survey to give the young voters an idea about which party they should consider voting for is a very helpful extra boost.

Encouraging Young Voters

What I knew before?

I knew that to vote in the general election you have to be 18 years old or above and that you cannot turn up and vote if you haven't registered. I was also aware that there's a very small percentage of young people who actually vote because they don't care, don't know what each parties policies are or they feel as though, as a young person, their vote wouldn't be able to change the country. 

What was the task?
The college are starting a campaign to encourage young people to vote and know more about what it means to vote in an election. They will be using some of the posters that we designed as part of the campaign as using the NUS campaign to get young people to cote that have the slogans 'Your vote matters, make sure you're in' to teach young people the importance of registering to vote and 'These people want you to vote for them, this is what they're saying. 

I took a survey to find out which parties policies I appealed to the most, here are my results: 

The campaign is aiming to simplify the voting process and break it down so that young people aren't automatically put off and bored and so that they understand what their options are when it comes to making a vote. I found out some of labours policies that may interest young people, policies that they can relate to and understand easily:

• Guaranteed GP appointments within 48 hours, or the same day for the people who need it. 
• Making mental health treatment an NHS policy and to make sure that all NHS staff have mental health training. 
• Improvements to poor quality apprenticeships so that the final qualifications are more valuable.

The  http://www.labour.org.uk website is very helpful at informing about the Labour policies. They are written as simple points so they're quick to read and not over complicated. When looking at policies linked to a specific topic e.g. schools, the website gives you the option to look at policies on related topics e.g. young people. This is a really helpful feature for young people as they can get quick access to what they're interested in.

What I know now? 
I know know that you are able to register to vote from the age of 16, although you must still be 18 to got, the fact that you've registered shows the amount of young people who are interested in voting so that the parties know who their target audience are when it comes to creating future policies.
In the last general election only 44% of young people who were eligible to vote actually voted.

Creating A Christmas Jumper Pattern

What I knew before?

Beforehand, I knew how to draw basic shape in illustrator and also draw freehand using the brush and pencil tools, I had used the fill tool to fill in areas of my drawing as well as the pipette to copy exact colours from an original image to transfer into my own drawing. The basic commands I was aware of were holding alt to my continuous copies of the shape and cmd+D to duplicate a shape further.

What was the task?

Using a tutorial, I followed each step to create a pattern fit for a Christmas jumper using a repeating pattern.
Firstly I had to create my stitch shape my merging two ovals and locking this shape onto the grid. I then chose my dark background colours for the stitch pattern to go on top of. I locked the background so that it wouldn't move throughout the process. Here is the first line of stitches on my background:

Using the Cmd+D shortcut, I duplicated the stitch over the whole background. For the dark red background, the stitches are bright red, and for the dark green background I made the stitches a brighter shade of green.

After using the pain fill tool to create my design, I has one complete tile. Next, I made it into a pattern so that it would follow continuously. My pattern then become it's own swatch that I used to dil a rectangle to show my final design, that you can see at the top of this post.

What I know now?

• How to merge two shapes so they act as one.
• When and when not to use a grid to make sure the pattern is correctly aligned.
• Grouping and ungrouping sections of the design to isolate different sections of colour and pattern.
• Use the paint fill to select individual shapes to fill and create a pattern.
• How to convert my design into a pattern that can be used as a swatch to fill new objects.

Citing And Referencing

What did I know before?
Before learning the rules and layout of Harvard style citing and references I was unaware of it's importance. I have always known that plagiarism and using other peoples work as your own is a crime, but I assumed that as long as their work was reworded slightly then it doesn't count as their work. So in the past I have only references when copying and pasting an amount of someone else's work to show that none of the words were my own.   

What was the task?
To learn how to cite and reference properly, I looked at three sources and two different ways of citing and referencing them. Using an online book, a physical book and a website, I took sections of each one to reference. The first form of citing was to paraphrase which is where you briefly reword someone else's work, however the views are still their own so you must give them credit. Here is my example of citing a paraphrased sentence: 

Harris (2013) thinks that mutual distrust can characterize relationships between campaign professional and academics.

The second part of the task was to go to the college library and find a book of our choice that would be useful for our task on elections and making a successful campaign. To do this we used the online library catalogue to search a keyword that would help us find a book, eBook or magazine that would contain useful information. I searched 'campaign' and found a useful book called 'Sales Promotion' that the librarian helped me locate. I read a few sections of the book and referenced a few sections, I used the quoting method and here's an example of that:

“Sales promotion, and indeed advertising and PR, communicate with one person at a time, usually the reader of a leaflet, poster, mailshot or press or TV advertisement. But they are not atomized individuals: they are people who build their understanding by means of their interactions with friends, colleagues, families and communities.” (Cummins and Mullin 2002, p.58)

After citing and referencing different sections from different sources I created a bibliography to reference and credit each separate source that I used. The bibliography is to put at the end of the work and it has it's own section.

What do I know now?
I know the correct way of referencing and citing someone else's work in terms of layout  e.g. including the surnames, date, page and any other sources that may have been cited within the text. I also now know that you must credit peoples work if you paraphrase it as it is still their work even if you alter a couple of words to make it less exact, to do this sort of citing you can either include their name and the date within your sentence or put the information in brackets at the end depending on what fits best. 

I also know the correct way of creating the bibliography, that you don't just simply write the name of the book but you have to mention specific points such as the authors name, book title, date published, edition number and the publishers name. Also, after using the library catalogue I now feel confident that I could use the library as a place of research as well as just the internet which would further my research. After these tasks I am going to be aware of which parts of my research are other peoples work and the best way to cite and reference the original source.

Recce Scouting Report

So far I have checked out three possible locations for my film, all around the college sight. I took my script with me to see what shots would be happening in each location and I have photographed each location and also made a checklist and made notes about each location to help me compare them with others, here is a link to the blogpost showing my physical findings.

I am happy with the staff kitchen in the media department. It will be used for the first scene of Sister 1 (Emily) alone in her kitchen therefore I don't need lots of space or an attractive backdrop, just the basic aspects of a kitchen, and luckily this location fits that brief.

The college car park is also an ideal location for the scene where Sister 2 (Jess) and her parents get out of their car and head towards to election hall. It's good because all of the crew will be able to access it and we won't have to worry about interfering with members of the public as the only people that should be around the area will be people linked to the college.

I don't think that Hive C is going to be the ideal location for my election hall. But I would like to use and area in the college for this as it is the best location for the whole cast and crew to arrive at. I will look at the studio in the media department as it is designed for filming purposes. I don't currently see any problems with it.

To continue my recce's I would like to look at an undercover car park, another kitchen and possibly to more locations that can be used as an election hall. I will be able to plan the second kitchen recce when I have discussed with my group who is happy for me to film in their kitchen and also who's kitchen is the easiest for the whole crew to access.