Tim's Blog

My work in youth participation really got started when the fantastic Bill Badham (Who incidentally is right his moment is somewhere cycling three times up a mountain in France to raise funds for a youth centre in Birmingham. Go sponsor him.) created four part-time jobs in The National Youth Agency Participation Team for 16 - 24 year olds to become co-trainers in equipping local and national government to include young people. Being one of the young members of that training team was a great experience for me - so I'm always delighted to see the model spreading.

Today's discussions at 2gether08 brought me back again to a realisation that youth work, and wider informal education, is not on very many people’s radar.

When we talk young people and education, conversations very quickly turn into conversations about schools and colleges - capturing only a small part of young peoples education. Only 9 minutes, in fact, of every hour in young people’s waking day is spent in school (and that’s just for the young people who are actually in school...).

Not all of the remaining 51 minutes of each hour will be spent in informal education, and for many young people, access to supported informal education is really limited (statutory youth services are only resourced to support on average 30% of their local 13 - 19 year old populations) - but, supported and unsupported informal education really mustn’t be forgotten and is something that, in a web 2.0 social media world, we should be paying a lot more attention to.

Thanks to Nick Booth for a pointer to this website where you can see which of the 198 National Indicators that central government sets for Local Authorities your council has chosen to focus on. Local Authorities have each had to choose 35 priority indicators that their performance will be measured against.

As Nick points out, the site isn't anywhere near as user friendly as it could be, but it does let me link to specific indicators. So, take a look at see:

• Is your Council focusing on providing positive activities for young people? (77 are)

I've explored the role of games in consultation before, but never bringing together the mix of playful real-world games, person-to-person interaction, and digital consultation and dialogue in quite the way that the process Kevin Harris describes in this recent blog post on 'Community engagement by treasure hunt'.

Kevin combined a quiz-book based treasure hunt around the site of the library due to be redeveloped with opportunities to speak to architects, chances to text-in ideas and an invitation to record reflections in the quiz-book. Kevin writes:

[Summary: you are invited to join in a free informal conference to talk about young people, the internet, opportunities, challenges, and change]

I've been struck again this week by how many people are thinking about young people's use of the internet, and the opportunities for engaging with young people online - but also by how disparate much of the action to move forward on those thoughts is.

More than ever we bring together the different threads of work to see if:

There have been murmurs about a 'Youth Participation Resources Kite mark for a while now.

Whilst concerns about the quality of resources on Children and Young People's participation might be founded (I've seen quite a few participation resources recently which have made me somewhat concerned due to their lack of clarity or any clear understanding of participation...) - the idea of one group certifying those resources which are 'quality' or not simply doesn't work*.

Instead - we need a space where potential users of a resource can discuss it. In part that might be the People&Participation Library with comments switched on - but what I really have in mind is a version of Social Source Commons for participation.

I came across Andreas' work at nonformality.org when he added to the reasons why youth workers should be blogging. And now Andreas and the team at the National Youth Agency of Estonia are taking the initative to kick start even more dialogue about how the informal learning sector across Europe can get far more engaged with the web by pulling together a Networking Seminar in Tallin, May 30 - 31, 2008.

From the Seminar flyer:

The context - why?

[Summary: Thought experiments for consultation prove their value in complex decision making]

Yesterday evening I took part in a 'Peoples Commission' as part of the Citizens Speak consultation on Asylum and Sanctuary in the UK organised by Leicester Intercultural Communication and Leadership School (where my wife, Rachel, is the project officer). The People's Commissions have been designed to be held by any small group of citizens - with the results of each local commission fed back into the deliberations of the Independent Asylum Commission who will be publishing a report and making recommendations for the UK Government on Asylum policy later this year.

With encouragement and fantastic support from Dave Briggs, I finally got a chance this afternoon to put together a more accessible homepage for the BarCampUKYouthOnline all ready for you to register to join us and take part...

We want BarCampUKYouthOnline on the 17th May 2008 to be an accessible informal gathering for all who are interested in:

[Summary: why should you be involving young people? - And once you know your reasons - what impact do those reasons have on the nature of their involvement?]

Can you hold an event about children and young people without children and young people being there?