Investor News

08 May 2014

Passion Project Update

Milestone Group PLC

(“Milestone” or the “Company”)

Update on Phase 1 of Milestone’s Passion Project, including comment from Boris Johnson

Milestone, the AIM quoted (AIM: MSG) provider of digital media and technology solutions, is pleased to announce an update on the Passion Project following the successful pilot earlier this year. The update includes:

• Three engagement events to July 2015 to engage 250,000 young people
• Launch of monthly CreativeXChange with employers and young people offering access to over 2,000 employment opportunities in next 18 months
• Appointment of Jermain Jackman, winner of The Voice 2014, as an Ambassador of the Passion Project

Engagement Events

Starting in May 2014 and running through to July 2015, Milestone has lined up three key events to engage with audiences of young people through physical activities and digital engagement. As previously announced, the Passion Project’s first engagement activity was held in conjunction with ten of London’s Professional Football Club’s Community Schemes. It engaged an audience of over 2,000 boys aged between 14 and 16 from across London’s 32 boroughs.

Following the success of this pilot, Milestone’s Programme Director, Frank Sweeney, is now introducing the next three events to engage with an audience of young people aged 16 to 24. The aim of these events is to help young people to use their passions to find employment and create social change.

Great British Carnival (“GBC”)

GBC is a legacy of London 2012 Festival Commission, “the Rio-London Carnival Exchange”. It is an Arts Council of England funded programme that brings together Brazilian, Caribbean and indigenous traditions to create large scale, site specific spectacle and experiential performance. GBC works with the UK’s leading Carnival Artists to create programmes that promote public appreciation of the excellence and accessibility of the art form and encourages participation in traditional and contemporary Carnival Arts practice.

GBC has also been commissioned by London Legacy Development Corporation to present a one-day arts and cultural festival to celebrate the anniversary of the opening of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

This year, the Passion Project will build the capacity of GBC’s young adult creative learning programme. This will support the delivery of accredited skills development and vocational training programmes that lead to real employment.

To date, GBC with over 200 artists has performed to 392,000 carnival and festival audiences at London 2012 Festival Hackney One Carnival, The Mayor’s Thames Festival, Liverpool’s Brazilica Festival, Margate carnival and Bridgwater carnival. Its creative learning programmes have engaged over 700 participants.

The GBC 2014 programme returns to Margate and Bridgwater carnivals, as well as visiting the Isle of Wight for the 125th anniversary Sandown Carnival.

Parliament Week

Parliament Week is an annual series of events that aim to raise awareness of Parliament and encourage engagement with the UK’s democratic system and its institutions. The Greater London Authority Peer Outreach Team arrange and produce “In The House”, a youth take-over day at Portcullis House featuring political speakers, debating forums, information markets, arts and cultural programmes.

The Passion Project is supporting the GLA Peer Outreach Team to develop a digital platform utilising popular social media to engage young audiences and facilitate participation.

BE United Urban Quest – Wembley 2015

Boroughs United is London’s liveliest urban variety show. Since 2000 the annual show has consistently played to capacity audiences at the Hackney Empire Theatre. To date, over 2,500 young Londoners, including Jermain Jackman (winner of The Voice), Leona Lewis (winner of The X Factor) Diversity and Twist & Pulse (Britain’s Got Talent) have performed in the show and managed the backstage production. Audiences of over 15,000 have watched the shows.

BE United Urban Quest is a development of Boroughs United, the annual youth talent show and peace campaign, conceived and produced by The Crib social inclusion charity. Boroughs United is a grass-roots, peer-led programme, delivered by young people, with support from youth workers and creative facilitators. It brings together a pan-London network of over 200 young volunteers, who participate in a full range of creative and administrative skills development programmes from performance to technical and administrative event management.

BE United Urban Quest is a pan-London initiative that, over an 18-month programme, will develop cross-sector, multi-partnership collaborations in each of London’s boroughs. It will engage and develop the talents of 13,500 young artists and creative practitioners aged 16-24 years, 33,000 live audience and a core 110,000 on-line audience, culminating in a large-scale show at Wembley Arena.

Engagement

Milestone expects to engage with a total of 250,000 young people through physical engagement and further 3 million through digital engagement. All participants will have the opportunity to be matched to employers, sector skills academies and supply chain consortiums for guaranteed interviews, work placements and employment. Those young people participating in the employment route-way will be offered the opportunity to participate in Milestone’s SFT – Map of Life resilience and emotional intelligence training and other Milestone  related training programmes.

Launch of monthly CreativeXChange Events

The CreativeXChange are a series of events that will cover disciplines such as Fashion, Music, Film, Design, Movement, Art, Animation and Creative Business. These events will take the shape of debates, workshops, focus groups, discussion forums, editorial, filmed and audio content and are expected to engage over 20,000 young people and provide access to over 2,000 jobs from our employers and partners over the next 18 months.

These events will create community and offer access to industry experience to attract, engage, empower and educate young people nationally, giving them the tools to engage through their creative passion or the opportunity to give them a try. Each event will be led by an internationally recognised mentor and supported by youth workers and creative facilitators

Appointment of Jermain Jackman as Passion Project Ambassador

Jermain Jackman, the winner of the BBC’s The Voice 2014, winning a recording contract after being mentored by WILL.i.am, has been a long term Peer Mentor at The Crib in Hackney and Young Parliamentarian in Hackney. He has won other talent shows (Boroughs United in 2011 and Hackney to Harlem in 2012) and performed with Leona Lewis to 100,000 people at the BBC’s Hackney weekender during the 2012 Olympics.  

He is famously known for saying that he wants to be the “first black singing prime minister”, but later commented that he doesn’t want the actual job – he just wants to make real change to London. He has now agreed to come on-board as one of the Passion Project’s ambassadors, a real inspiration to many young people.

Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, commented:  
“This exciting new project [BE United Urban Quest] means it can unleash the creative potential of youngsters in every borough across the city, helping them to raise their aspirations and to increase their confidence as performers.”

Deborah White, Milestone Group CEO, commented:
“This phase of the Passion Project is an exciting time for the team. It brings together all the aspects of what will be a large scale, cross sector, collaboration specifically targeting the engagement of the young people. At the same time it aims to address the issue of employability skills for employers and creating employment opportunities for young people. The team have worked hard for some time to achieve this and its realisation creates a wide range of commercial and social impact opportunities that will be of benefit to all aspects of the business."

For further information