The City of Hobart’s Youth Advisory Squad, otherwise known as YAS, is a vibrant group of young people between the ages of 12 to 25 who advocate for youth related issues and actively work towards making the community a more inclusive place for young people. 

During the COVID 19 lockdown period, we, the members of YAS continued to meet up via zoom once a week to check in with each other and discuss how we were all coping throughout the pandemic. Having these catch ups allowed us to connect with people outside our families and allowed us to share the different techniques we were all using to cope through the trials of quarantine. In order to continue to connect with other young people in our community, we put out calls for young people to engage with our “iso-moments” competition.

The competition was open to any young person with any form of creative expression. We had people participate in the competition with all sorts of entries from photography series, poetry, digital artwork, craft projects, and written works. The competition was a chance to get in touch with the creative abilities of young people in our community as well as provide them an opportunity to find ways to express themselves whilst in lockdown and isolated from the larger community. The winner also got the chance to win a $50 Uber eats voucher.

Annabelle Tang, a former YAS member, was the winner of the competiton. This was a great project which gave us the opportunity to remain hopeful and proactively engaged with young people within our community during a trying time. 

Submission written by Zoe Adams, YAS member