Simone Baird has been running projects for teenagers in London since 2002 when she set-up and ran media workshops with children aged 13-16 in conjunction with Ealing City Learning Centre and schools in the borough. These projects consisted of live tutorials and discussions, and the production of video, audio and print products.
Simone set-up the first Trashed project in autumn 2005, and was a collaboration with Time Out Magazine. Sessions were run with a group of young people in Ealing across the school holidays and on weekends, where there were live sessions with creative professionals, and the young people produced a magazine which was then printed and distributed across London inside copies of Time Out.
Since then there have been two further Time Out Trashed projects, in autumns of 2007 and 2008. In summer 2008 Simone set up an Underage Trashed project (in conjunction with the Underage Festival, which was attended by 8,000 14-18 year olds), involving young people from not just Ealing but also South Camden.
In summer 2009 we returned to the Underage Festival, this time to produce video content as well as written work. The results can be seen here. Trashed is now moving online to allow us to reach more teenagers.