TEENS TO PREDICT FUTURE

Enter our competition

The Advertiser and the Wishaw Press want to hear what our young readers think Scotland will be like in 50 YEARS time.

We want to know HOW the people will have changed and WHAT the landscape will be like – culturally, architecturally, environmentally and politically.

And we’ll be offering prizes for the best idea and publishing as many as we can online.

Today, we’re launching Aye Write, our new creative writing contest – run in conjunction with Tunnock’s – to find out what today’s teenagers would imagine the Scotland of tomorrow to be like.

We want to read about how the country and its people will evolve over the next five decades and what challenges they will be facing in this future.

We believe this is the perfect time to encourage the creative skills of teenagers and to spark their awareness of the changing moods and tempos prevalent in the social and political landscapes of today.

Project co-ordinator Ed Murphy said: “Teenagers’ voices have never been more important than at this time; and establishing a platform for their creative thinking is essential.

“I think this could be a fantastic ‘time capsule’ of thoughts and ideas which will capture the mood of this generation.”

This could also be an opportunity to inspire the next Iain Banks, Liz Lochhead, Irvine Welsh, JK Rowling or Ian Rankin – and the competition will be a great social document for the collective thinking of today’s youth culture.

There will be three distinctive categories for their ideas – prose, poetry and musical lyrics.

And they will be judged in two age groups from secondary schools – Years 1-3 and Years 4-6.

Youngsters can be creative as they want to be – the ideas can be as realistic or as fantastic as they wish – and the stories can be conveyed in any genre they like.

They can develop their idea in any genre – be it realistic drama, science-fiction or even horror. Just be as creative as you can – and make your readers THINK about your ideas.

There will be a maximum of 500 words per entry and only one entry per pupil.

Schools will collect the entries from their year groups and submit all the printed entries to the Airdrie & Coatbridge Advertiser, One Central Quay, Glasgow, G3 8DA.

The closing date for the competition is November 29, 2019.

The winners will be announced on January 23, 2020.

We will be promoting as many of the entries as we can and there will be top prizes for the best ideas judged by an independent panel.

Write on Advertiser editor Graham Miller (centre left) and operations director of Tunnock’s, Fergus Loudon (centre right), with pupils from St Aidan’s High and Coltness High and Coltness head teacher John McGilp (left)

Launch St Aidan’s High and Coltness High pupils Jack Aitken, Jared Thomson, Meghan McPhail and Beth Johnston with Coltness head teacher John McGilp (centre left) and Fergus Loudon, Tunnock’s operations director