About the Bottletop Alcohol Awareness Project
Bottletop is an exciting and highly innovative project developed with 16-19 year olds in Herefordshire and designed to engage with an age-group that has received less focus in alcohol awareness during this critical period of achieving adulthood. It taps in to their creativity and experiences in developing an innovative approach of peer-led alcohol awareness education.
All of the content produced for the website came through the facilitated work of young people and are their own ideas and words on the subject. The site may not be to everyone’s liking or always be “on message” but Bottletop is true to the genuine voice of young people in Herefordshire.
Bottletop.info is the end result, a website about alcohol awareness by young people for young people.
“It was really exciting to be doing something for other young people. I think we’re probably the best to know how to put the information across as we are the same age.”
The project began as a partnership between international brewer Scottish and Newcastle (now part of Heineken UK), educational theatre charity The Play House, local sustainable development charity the Bulmer Foundation, local web designers Infinity Unlimited, Herefordshire Primary Care Trust and the three further education colleges in Hereford – Hereford Sixth Form College, Herefordshire College of Technology and Hereford College of Arts, and received the support of an investment from Arts and Business.
First launched at the end of 2008, the project has since been joined by other partners including 2XL Youth Projects, Worcestershire and Herefordshire Youth Offending Service and Herefordshire Healthy Schools and received public funding in 2009 through Safer Herefordshire. A new wave of bottletops hit the site in Summer 2010, the result of the enthusiastic participation of new groups of Herefordshire young people, looking at different aspects of drinking, and being safe when drinking.
The hope is that the site will continue to develop in future years and that other young people will also get the opportunity to have their opinions heard, have what the participants recognise as an amazing experience, and contribute to the well-being of the Herefordshire community.