- The UK tour of NewsWise festivals arrived in Bradford, in response to recent research revealing parents’ fears about the impact of fake news on their children’s lives
- NewsWise festivals equip children and parents with the skills and knowledge to engage with quality news sources and develop critical thinking skills
- Free resources, activities and top tips are available for parents to support their children’s news literacy at home: www.theguardian.com/newswise
41 children and parents from Denholme and St James primary schools took part in a family event at Bradford City’s Utilita Energy Stadium yesterday as part of the week-long NewsWise festival in Bradford.
NewsWise teamed up with Bradford City FC Community Foundation and Bradford Stories to run a series of activities and games designed to help families develop educational skills to identify false or misleading information and seek out quality news sources. Local journalists Mary Dowson and David Carpenter from Bradford Community Broadcasting also showed families how to spot reliable news sources and taught families all about how a press conference works and their top tips on what questions to ask.
Cameron, 11, a pupil from Denholme Primary School, said: “It was fun playing with photos and images and learning how to change them. I created a giant dinosaur which looked like it was going to eat me. I know what to look out for now when I come across news stories and how to stop and check.”
Nikki, Cameron’s Mum, said: “It’s really important for parents to be more aware as fake news is all over social media and that is their main source of information.”
The NewsWise festivals are an extension of the UNESCO award-winning NewsWise project, which was launched in 2018 by The Guardian Foundation, the National Literacy Trust and the PSHE Association, and funded by Google, to equip children from disadvantaged communities with the skills and knowledge to engage with, challenge and enjoy news.
In 2020, NewsWise will take its festivals to towns and cities across the UK, delivering a week of fun and educational news literacy activities, including a family event, in-school workshops and teacher training sessions. Free curriculum-linked resources are also available to all UK primary schools, as well as top tips for parents to support their child’s news literacy at home: www.theguardian.com/newswise.
NewsWise created a UK tour of family workshops in response to recent research published by the National Literacy Trust revealing parents’ fears about the impact of fake news on their children’s lives and parents’ need for greater support to help their children understand the news [1]. The research found that:
- Half of UK parents are worried about the impact of fake news and misinformation on their children’s lives (50%) and don’t think their children have the skills to spot it (52%)
- 2 in 5 parents (40%) admitted to falling for fake news themselves
- 2 in 5 parents (39%) never watch, listen to or read news with their child at home and 1 in 5 (21%) never talk to their child about news
- Parents from disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to never watch, listen to or read news with their children (45% vs 37%) and to believe their children don’t have the skills to spot fake news (52% vs 39%) than parents from more advantaged backgrounds
To reach the families most in need of support, the NewsWise festivals will take place in towns and cities across the UK with a high proportion of disadvantaged communities. Festivals will take place in several National Literacy Trust Hub areas, including Swindon, the North Yorkshire Coast and Bradford, as well as across Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and in London.
The festivals complement the wider roll-out of the NewsWise programme to 150 schools throughout the UK in 2019/20, aiming to support the news literacy skills of 8,000 7-11-year-olds.
Angie Pitt, Director of NewsWise at The Guardian Foundation, said: “We were delighted to provide children and teachers in Denholme and St James primary schools with opportunities to understand news production, help them identify misinformation, bias, and opinion and seek out quality news sources.
“Thank you to the brilliant teachers and children at Fagley and Ingrow primary schools where we’re running workshops this week and to Bradford City FC community Foundation and the journalists Mary and David from Bradford Community Broadcasting who volunteered to lend us their valuable insights.”
Ian Ormondroyd, Chief Executive at Bradford City FC Community Foundation, said: “We’re delighted to be working with the NewsWise team to help local families engage in the news together. It was great to involve Billy Bantam in the NewsWise event here at the club, he had a great time answering brilliant questions put to him by the children and parents taking part in the press conference.”
The Bradford NewsWise festival was supported by Bradford Stories, an initiative from the National Literacy Trust to improve literacy levels in the city and promote reading, writing, speaking and listening. To find out more about Bradford Stories, visit: bradfordstories.org.uk.
To find out more about NewsWise and to access free resources, activities and top tips for parents to support their child’s news literacy at home, visit: www.theguardian.com/newswise.
