Trashed

Trashed is a youth-led project started in 2001 by Simone Baird, aimed at helping diverse teenagers get hands-on and horizon-busting experience in the creative industries. These unique experiences have included, to date: • Designing products – as we did with a reimagining of the trainer for Nike 78. • Enabling teenagers to produce content for brands or organisations – from a branded supplement for Rolex, a regular Time Out Trashed inserted into Time Out London, to taking over the Music Weekly podcast for the Guardian. • Organising unique work experience placements – as we did with the Underage Festival in 2010 and 2011. Most of the 14 to 17-year olds initially wanted to work in artist liaison or get as close to the celebrity artists as possible. At the end of their placements, however, they all wanted to be promoters, sound engineers or festival producers. One said: "It's incredible what you can do with a roll of string and gaffe-tape." • Arranging time with professionals in their workplace – such as Red Bull’s creative agency It’s Pretty Green and at Time Out magazine. • Running workshops that allow young people to work with professionals – like the three weeks of app-building courses at Rich Mix, with developers from Facebook, Seatwave, Skimlinks and Technlightenment. Trashed offers a unique opportunity for the right brand to work with 13-18 year olds in an immersive, interactive way. They learn how to project manage everything from magazines to gigs, haggle over paper quotes, learn business skills and office etiquette, and come up with new business ventures. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship: young people gain unique insight into industries they normally wouldn’t have a hope of hell of getting access into, and brands get access to this hard-to-reach demographic. Trashed Ltd was later founded in 2009 by Simone Baird and Alan Rutter, with significant help by Mark Jenkins, Paul Rakkar, and Eddy Lawrence.