Mountains and Molehills report

Mountains and Molehills Sharing good practice in youth participation Hello again everyone! Welcome to the full (and therefore quite long!) write-up of our practice-sharing weekend at Lockerbrook earlier this month. We really enjoyed meeting you all and working with you to share ideas, and we’re very grateful to you for spending two challenging days with us. We’re determined to make everyone’s hopes of staying in touch and continuing the inspiring conversations come true, so below is a list of contact details. Do stay in touch :) If you have any extra memories from the weekend you’d like to add, or want to amend something in the report, just let me know.

Our challenges and ideas for solving them: p3-5 Bored Meeting workshop: p6 Young Advisors workshop: p7 A to Z of Good Discussion and evening workshops: p8 Platform51 campaign workshop: p9 Leading for the Future resource: p10 Co-operative Schools workshop: p11 Open Space write-up: p11-13 Offline Twitter feed: p14 Final ideas, conclusions and looking to the future p15

who was there Name

Organisation

Email

Emma Jarvis

Envision

emmaj@envision.org.uk

Jay Birdi

Envision

jaybirdi@hotmail.com

Dom Stevenson

Envision

dominicst@live.com

Ali Thomas

Platform51

ali.thomas@platform51.org

Kerry Richards

Platform51

kerry.richards@platform51.org

Lauren Wright

Platform51

Via Ali Thomas

Shane Baker

Sheffield Futures

shane.baker@sheffieldfutures.org.uk

Zac Russell

Sheffield Youth Council

zacharyrussell@hotmail.co.uk

Kevin Jones

Young Advisors

kev@youngadvisors.org.uk

Jessica Greenhough

Young Advisors

jessica_greenhough@hotmail.co.uk

Adam Bradford

Young Advisors

adam.bradford@mt.com

Jo Banham

NDCS

joanna.banham@ndcs.org.uk

Andrew Clarke

NDCS

Via Jo Banham

Ellen Arthur

NDCS

Via Jo Banham

Ashley Simpson

Co-operative College

ashley_simpson@hotmail.co.uk

Julie Thorpe

Co-operative College

Julie@co-op.ac.uk

Emma Chadwick

NCVYS

emma@ncvys.org.uk

Alex Farrow

Practical Participation

alexjames.farrow@gmail.com

Verity Jones

Woodcraft Folk

verity.jones@woodcraft.org.uk

Jack Brown

Woodcraft Folk

jack.brown@woodcraft.org.uk

Chloë Darlington

Woodcraft Folk

chloe.darlington@woodcraft.org.uk

Francis Atkinson

Woodcraft Folk

francis@atkinsons.myzen.co.uk

Polina Aleksandrova

Woodcraft Folk / EVS

polina.aleksandrova@woodcraft.org.uk

Ellie Ferguson

Woodcraft Folk Young Trainer

ellie-ferguson@live.co.uk

Alice Hewson

Woodcraft Folk Young Trainer

alice.hewson@hotmail.co.uk

Rob Sandy

Woodcraft Folk Young Trainer

robotcoprob@hotmail.com

Ruth O’Sullivan

Woodcraft Folk Young Trainer

ruth_18@hotmail.co.uk

Cadan Ap Tomos

Woodcraft Folk

cadan@gwerin.org

Jon Nott

Woodcraft Folk

jon.nott@woodcraft.org.uk

what we did The agenda for the weekend included: A taster of Bored Meeting training for young people joining teams / committees A workshop from Young Advisors on their methods of youth leadership Practice in group discussion techniques with Woodcraft’s Young Trainers A workshop on Amnesty International’s youth engagement Activities used to train mentors in Woodcraft Folk Campaigning activities with Platform51 A taste of the new youth leadership resource, Leading For The Future The story of the first co-operative school from one of its first pupils

We also got a really useful and fun taster of communicating without using our voices, to help us make sure the weekend was accessible to our young deaf participants.

Ordering ourselves into one long line according to our birthdays and then according to our names wasn’t too difficult to do without talking, but reading the lips of someone mouthing the words ‘cook’ and ‘path’ was almost impossible—there are so many similar words!

Ellen and Andrew asked us to speak clearly, one at a time, to help them lip-read and to help our palantypists Rhiannon and Rachel to type everything we said.

We shared our challenges, and offered our ideas on how others could solve theirs. There were common themes of ensuring young people can participate consistently from region to region and locally as well as nationally: we’re all helping young people participate, but we want to make sure it’s fair, ongoing and effective, not just tokenistic or patchy.

Involving a national group of younger young people (under 15) in continuing with ideas and decisions outside of meeting when many are not used to non-face to face communication on a sustained and regular basis.  Ask them how they usually communicate with each other  Have ‘theme’ weeks to focus thoughts and encourage ideas  Using a social networking as a platform so it’s easier talking to a group, notifications from it could motivate or remind them to do something.  Have training in non f2f comms  We use text lists to distribute important info + contact between meetings. We have a dedicated yp phone for safeguarding and use sign-up to create lists to send texts to large groups.  Decide a way you all going to communicate phone, email or FB. Highly recommended FB for older & email for younger. Always stick to this communication, FB secret groups are great. Safe places to have informal discussions, share pics and docs. A way for yp to communicate with friends. MAKE SURE THERE IS TRAINING

Overcoming policies we (young people) disagree with. Namely an over-dependent policy of teens doing too much for younger people on camps. – Has culminated in a boycott from 15—20 yr olds.

Encourage a two way working relationship to help inspire young people and delegate responsibility to younger people to share responsibilities  Ensure where possible the young people take lead on what ever needs doing, even a phone call. Workers to facilitate.

Delegate and empower young people to do things themselves.

Try to encourage a working relationship to help young people and share responsibilities 

How do you maintain enthusiasm for youth participation on a local level?

Recruiting young people and keeping them interested

Get together maybe once a moth with activities  It’s really important to have a good diary of meeting, events, opportunities for training & development. If you do not have the above you’re likely not to get commitment & lose focus of the group’s reason for existence, which might be giving a poor service to those it supports in the city  Clear actions and roles so people feel useful  Celebrate the difference the group has made  Outline exactly why YP should get valued / involved with the programme. What will they get out of it?

Engaging with young people in the North  My group is called A.C.E. as NCVYS is London based which stands for ‘About Care Experience’. It’s like a youth  Move events around lots -council for YP that have been >expenses/fare pool in children’s home or  Travel to different event places fostered. We try & make  Regional web pages and FB-/Twitter being in care a better accounts experience for future YP.  Find a great venue in the north for inspiring meetings/residentials  Regional network feeding into regular social events, options of training and signposting to other opps in local area  I attend groups in London and I would say it’s about yp wanting to attend and staff going up North and talking to young people  Have regional support network run by people in the North for people in the North  Good contacts with Youth Service & volunteer sections, send updates, e-bulletins and set them to share on their social media. Do marketing campaign & have a better presence 

Reflection sessions Social activities Regular events Online forms / discussions so yp stay engaged after meetings/events  Ensure yp lead steer the group  Do not be tokenistic  Ensure minutes are sent out with action points so people know what’s expected of them  Make sure there’s an element of fun after all they’re still young  Ensure rewarded events / activities/residentials  Enough training & development  Calendar of events so young people know well in advance plans  Feedback & evaluations    

How to get more younger people into youth participation and also maintaining strong bonds and friendships?

Make their involvement relevant to them and a real sharing of power  Team them up with older YP so they don’t feel overwhelmed  Accessible activities and resources that are young people friendly  Involving students with events outside of their usual sessions can strengthen relationships  Ensure they’re good linked with schools and youth clubs  Make sure that you reward the group for positive work and do fun sessions/ stuff  Make sure the group is YP lead and what is needed in the city  Do events and consultation to allow others to get involved 

Finding the young people who need or want mentors.

Make contacts to youth services, schools, colleges, specialise group  Make a leaflet with info on reference process  Sell your service youth friendly  Give examples  Make sure the pairing up is what both parties are happy with  Maybe mentor isn’t the right word when engaging young people? Why can’t they articulate what a mentor is and why they would want one?  Start by focussing on the issues and then introduce the idea of a mentor rather than other way round?  Through following new activity/change People often need specific support so make clear the offer rather than generic 

Young people don’t feel empowered to make change or do things differently Show them changes they or others have made  Use case studies and examples of people like them have achieved: video and photos are great  Young people need to be empowered through youth workers to open up about their thoughts  Young people always have a passion which should be voiced where appropriate.

Make them aware that their voice will be heard. 

Young people elected onto a regional During YC & UKYP we find it steering committee aren’t coming to hard to get schools & colleges meetings, replying to e-mails etc. often to push the importance of enough to ensure smooth running of voting and having themselves the council. represented at local, city, How do we re-engage them and keep regional, national level. We them on board? have tried an award for 50% vote, 70% & 90%. I think they forget the importance of  Events or new challenges could empowering YP to have a voice help inspire & motivate these young out of educational people establishment.  Emails are old school - I use FB or Twitter. Addition to that: private groups great for confidential  Give examples of common conversation ensuring + safeguarding. issues that yp face in order Quote ‘working where YP are @ is to engage them youth work’  Make sure it is young people  Buddies—everyone’s responsible telling the schools that it is for informing + bringing someone else important and why  Ensure that those elected clearly  SF go talk to governing know the expectations & how to go bodies of schools and ask them about stepping down. to get schools involved  Ensure it’s easy to pass on  Maybe invest in a more apologises & have a set procedure to formal election process (e.g. deal with those not engaging ideas of national democracy) in  Make sure you plan & calendar order to educate young people events and ensure YP have a copyand inspire them to take to the maybe provide diaries stand and vote  Ensure you do session evaluations  Run workshops on the & send anonymous feedback forms importance of voting. Often with SA envelopes so people can be young people don’t make a link more honest between issues that affect them  Skype/phone to reconnect in a and politics—need to make time where responses are instant politics seen fun, interesting and relevant to the yp How do you embed new practices? We often try new things which work well but find ourselves slipping back into old habits that may be less inclusive, less fun or less productive.

Mentoring Transitions If people are reverting, don’t give in. Keep up the new practices, explain why  Make sure it’s embedded into every day activities, perhaps have a wall with all the new stuff to keep refreshing, inform yp & make them aware. Perhaps new ways aren’t the best way. Make sure everyone agrees to the changes & someone enforces it  Reflect on why you slip back into old ways. When it gets hard? How can you notice this and overcome it?   

Platform 51: We are a national organisation who have brought loads of young women together to have a national, collective voice. How can we maintain joined up practice and embed participation with no money to come together?

Buddies/mentors/twinning between groups/centres to share practice from one to another  Online presence! Ensure that feedback, things happening etc is shared with one another. If you become isolated you will not share good practice which will be wasted 

Teams have great ideas but struggle to maintain motivation to carry out their plans.

Get them to make goals to achieve, see if they achieved it at the end  Set realistic targets and time scales  Show them the results of everything they do-tangible outputs from previous discussions-so they knew they’re making progress and being heard  Help provide support and resources in order to motivate them to participate as a team, comms support  Lots of small steps=big achievements  Why do they lose motivation is the real question, ask?  Perhaps workers aren’t supporting them with action planning and suggesting ideas(who to contact etc).

Action plan, goal set and get a leader 

Recruitment-encouraging new young people from local schools/youth clubs to become involved. Little understanding about what woodcraft is about if you haven’t been brought up in the organisation.

Free taster events run by & for young people  Run a project in the school / YC to gain interest  Taster sessions  Speakers who have participated in the programme  Articulate in recruitment why they would want to get involved.

What can they get out of the opportunity?  Make sure youth friendly, precise and jargon free 

Envision: we want young people to be involved in the decision making process of the organisation but often struggle to ensure they are informed enough about our strategy(+ jargon) to enable them to be effective participants in the discussion.

Simple ‘jargon-busting’ techniques as and when complex terms are used  Nitty-gritty strategy & jargon are part of the process—so don’t force it - some young people will be interested, not all  If your organisation is for young people shouldn’t it be very much youth-led & friendly? The strategy should be straight forward. Make sure you put packs of info together from previous meetings-send meeting outcomes via email/post to keep updated 

NDCS: -Engaging with young people online -Meeting the needs of every deaf child -Getting everyone together, sharing information  Ensure the brand is well published: Facebook, Twitter, Publications  Make links with youth services so they can spread the words to deaf yp in their communities  Ensure to have regional meetings which are inclusive for all  Give the right training/support

 Small grant fund

allocated by youth panel  Get involved with LAC’s

Struggling to get participation in a 16-20 year old’s Woodcraft Folk group in my local area. How do I encourage yp to join?

Clearly outline what they will get out of it in recruitment materials, e.g. will they gain new skills? If so, what skills—spell out how these will be useful in the future  Are there any leadership opportunities?  What support is available for them? (workshops etc.) + use reflection sessions to reflect=articulate what they have achieved so they still feel excited by it.  Go back to your current members—ask them what’s appealing, what are the key marketing points? Fresh and creative ideas!  See if they would be interested in mentoring peers  Does your group have youth friendly publicity, fb, flyers, posters?  Have you contacted youth services, schools?  Have you done assemblies to talk about what you’ve done?  Is there a place where people can find out about joining?  What got you involved, perhaps that’ll work again. 

How to maintain integrity when undertaking participation work when working on programmes with pre-scribed targets or outcomes?

Focusing on pre-scribed targets doesn’t mean you can’t do other things  Is there flexibility?  Adapting materials+ resources+ events  In this the ‘how’ is as important as the ‘what’. The outcomes might be set but young people can be part of designing the process of achieving them  Prescription is the backbone, however it should be youth lead and be directed by them but sticking to the group main aims. Not all prescriptions work in other areas. Nothing can be stuck in stone. 

NDCS: Supporting young people to make change in their local area

How can I encourage more 13-15 year olds to run activities for their peers and get involved in national woodcraft? How can I help to reduce the dropout rate of 16 year olds in Woodcraft?

Offer mentor support Host a facilitation training weekend Reduce drop out by explaining how staying involved will benefit them. What new things can you offer?  Leading for the future  Remain engaged with their key issues. Utilise social networking and apps  Re-engagement presentations can help to reduce drop out. Plus clarify what they gain from the programme, such as skills, relate to personal statements   

Ruth and Cadan introduced us to Bored Meeting—a set of activities to help people of all ages work well on teams and committees Ruth and Cadan explained that Bored Meeting activities were developed to improve skills, lessen the intimidating aspect of democratic processes and help people make decisions well.

An early stage of the process is getting to know your team. We imagined a map of the UK on the floor of the room and stood at the place we identified as home. Finding we had something in common with the people standing near us was a good way to start.

Then we came up with a list of all sorts of teams, and split into small groups to work out what would make a particular team perfect. We found a lot of similarities in our perfect teams, regardless of whether it was a group of flatmates, a football team or the UN! Next was 'making the case', where everybody made a 30 second manifesto speech on a topic of somebody else's choosing. These were fascinating (topics included: human rights, improvement of subtitle provision and quality, Fruji Milkshakes, homelessness, the history of maths, the global food system, looked after children, the negative image of young people in the media and Exeter football club). Everyone rose to the challenge and we heard a lot of impassioned and persuasive speeches. We reflected that when you’re representing others, you want time to do your research and get to understand how they feel. It can be interesting but also disempowering to hear someone else speaking on your behalf.

Finally, we imagined being given £150 to spend in a local youth centre. Each group had a selection of options (such as social enterprise, an event, stocks and shares, glitter and glue, a day of participation and inclusiveness training, subsidising a trip). It is possible to make a group decision without voting! Consensus and open minded debate were, in the main, the most successful methods. We discussed the criteria used to make decisions in these kind of discussions – it’s a natural process but sometimes need to be made explicit. to ensure everyone is involved fairly and knows what process is being used.

“Really good to be talking to other organisations and finding common ground and values” - feedback on the weekend

Young people have a unique set of skills and knowledge, which is marketable and can be applied to change services and communities for the better.

Early on Kevin told us the Young Advisors model of youth participation is controversial, and that he was happy to be grilled by anyone who wanted to challenge it!

First of all, a ‘brain energiser’ exploring ‘What if...?’ situations, which Young Advisors are encouraged to do frequently in their interaction with businesses. In groups we explored hypothetical situations such as What if we were in a Utopia? and What if there were no hypothetical questions? Utopia turned out to be less fun than you would think!

The idea for Young Advisors came out of a government regeneration programme, where places defined as deprived had a lot of money offered to them for services which HAD to be run by members of the community. Many of these services were for young people—so it made sense to create an initiative where young people had a say on the development of the services.

Young Advisors get at least two days guided training, and the skills they need to go into organisations and change them. They use a Social Action model, asking What, Why, How, and looking at possible actions and reflections.

Kevin suggested using Alesha Dixon’s ’The Boy Does Nothing’ (which probably got stuck in quite a few heads for the rest of the weekend!) as a way to explore the social action model: Does he wash up? (No) Does he brush up? (No).

Young Advisors is based on the principle that young people have a unique set of skills, specific to them:  they’re less attached to the past  they have energy and enthusiasm  more time in the community than any other age group  you can find out more about a neighbourhood from a young person  young people have contact with 'hard to reach young people'  they know all about the services they use (care, criminal justice, youth groups)

Adam and Jessica gave an interesting presentation about their work as Young Advisors in Sheffield, where they made a sexual health service more accessible and effective for young people. Adam and Jess are part of a Gold Team, meaning they get paid directly for their work. There are also Bronze, teams, who work voluntarily, and Silver, where the client makes a donation to a central pot of money. For those of us who might be wary of the commercial aspect of Young Advisors’ work—it was young people themselves who asked to work voluntarily :)

- and that this knowledge is worth something.

Teams of Young Advisors can therefore market their skills and knowledge, and be paid as consultants, rather than asking, ‘please involve us’.

We were all inspired by their work and had more questions than there was time to answer—so do keep in touch with Young Advisors!

“My favourite memory is buying a hat in the shape of the Loch Ness Monster” - Andrew

ng veni e y rda Satu C is for Consensus, and V is for Veto...

Rob and Alice introduced everyone to the A to Z of Good Discussion, a guide to making group discussions fair and effective, produced by 16—20 year olds in Woodcraft. (If you’d like more copies of the A to Z, just let us know. It’s available online here: www.spanthatworld.com/a-to-z-of-good-discussion)

Ellie ran an evening workshop about Amnesty International, using a game of piggy in the middle to get people thinking about human rights. Everyone made kites to symbolise support for Afghan women, who are denied many of their rights including the popular sport of kite-flying. This is Ellie above, dressed as a dictator (makes you wonder why any of them bother with something as boring as a uniform...)

We used a few different methods to explore good discussion techniques, all of which got us arguing passionately with each other, even for things we didn’t agree with, which was a useful challenge. It was suggested at the end of the weekend that this short workshop should be used at the start of every event :) Particularly fun was speed-debating, and also taking sides for the mock debate on whether Jaffa Cakes are cakes or biscuits. Using serious topics in the speed debate made us empathise with views we wouldn’t usually consider, and using a fun topic in the mock debate allowed us to practise disagreeing quite strongly without upsetting people we’d just become friends with! The question of whether you can dip a cake in your tea got quite contentious...

Verity gave us a taster of the activities she uses to train Mentors at Woodcraft Folk, who are crucial in supporting young people to take on leadership roles.

Our communication skills were tested by a series of drawing tasks, where a volunteer described a picture for us to draw without saying exactly what the picture was. On our first try, we couldn’t ask any questions, and a few of us produced drawings that didn’t match the volunteer’s picture at all! A second round with ‘closed’ questions gave us more opportunity to get the information we needed, and a third round with ‘open’ questions proved that you need a combination of both question types to get a full understanding of any picture.

“10 – 12 year olds taught me to build a co-operative upside-down camp fire and bake bread on it” - Verity

Many women are prescribed anti-depressants in their teens and twenties, and never get the chance to explore alternative treatments.

Platform51 took us on their campaign journey to their campaign exploring mental health issues. After a presentation about the history of Platform51 and their name change from YWCA, Ali, Kerry and Lauren introduced us to one of their mental health campaigns, looking into the issue of women and anti-depressants. We explored the first steps, like choosing the topic according to case studies, as well as their work in centres across the country. A part of the campaign’s action was a visit by young women to the Houses of Parliament, where they told their stories and ran a game activity which we got to take part in at first hand.

The game consists of 2 types of action cards that tell the story of Layla, a character based on true personal experiences. The colourful cards are read out and discussed in the group, then a black and white card is read out but isn’t discussed - it builds a kind of a bridge inside the story. At the end, participants (us, and we’re sure the MPs too) are more aware about the importance of sensitizing as many people as possible to mental health issues and their appropriate treatment.

Once we’d heard how a good campaign works, we grouped in our organisations to plan our own campaign. Platform51 gave us a helpful balloon metaphor that focussed our thoughts on possible actions, resources and barriers. This model contains questions like: what helps a campaign lift off? what keeps it tied down? what might blow us off course? and who should be on board?

Every group presented their topic and action plan, and each one looked ready to take off immediately: - subtitling provision for educational videos - votes for 16 and 17 year olds - fighting negative stereotypes of young people - promoting mental health services in Sheffield To conclude, everyone was encouraged by Platform51 to sign the petition for the periodical review of antidepressant prescriptions.

“Small briefing on all charities / organisations at start” - suggestion for next time

Leading for the Future: leadership isn’t about meetings and figureheads, it’s about teamwork and social change.

Alex from Practical Participation explained how this new resource came into being.

It’s a collaboration between participation workers with experience from communities around the world, and Woodcraft members of all ages. The aim is to help groups of young people create a vision for action they want to take in their group, community or country—and develop the skills to take that action.

Ruth, who is 16, was involved in making sure the activities in this 12-session resource work for young people, and is now starting to run it with her own group.

It has four units, moving gradually outwards from looking at your own team to working with others in your area, and every unit suggests practical steps you can take to put your skills to use. There’s a log designed by young people, for keeping track of your progress.

We broke up into 4 groups and each tried an activity from each of the four modules. The activities were fairly easy to pick up and run, without much equipment or background knowledge, but needed some imagination to put them into practice in our temporary teams—they’ll make more sense if you run them within your organisation.

We all fed back on what the activities were and how it felt to be a part of them / what were the strengths (and weaknesses – although nobody mentioned any!) of the resource. We’d welcome feedback if you use any Leading for the Future activities in your organisation.

Participants were then invited to break off into our organisations to discuss the relevance of the resource for them. Platform51 are keen to use it already :) It was noted that having the resource explained was a much easier way to get your head around it than just reading it through, so Alex was requested to be interviewed for a 3 minute video to accompany the downloadable resource on the Woodcraft Folk website. A (very rough and ready) film is now online: http://vimeo.com/39052121.

“My favourite memory from Envision is shaving my hair off and raising £300” - Dom

In the workshop from the Co-operative College we got to know what Co-operative Schools are and heard a moving personal experience from Ash, whose school made the transition.

At first Julie asked everyone to consider what a co-operative was. We discussed our ideas and compared them to a widely accepted definition of a co-operative.

We got to know the history of co-operatives and co-operation in this context Julie displayed a video explaining the motivation and success of the first British co-operative, which started in 1844 in Rochdale. (here’s the link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYPe5xJAm5w).

Then Ash gave a very inspiring account of how his school moved from being a struggling school (with a GCSE pass rate of 40%) through the process of becoming a co-operative school. A cumbersome but definitely worthwhile process of changing the structures, inspiring the pupils and getting all the relevant bodies on board.

The co-operative school movement is growing! Starting in 2007, there are now more than 200 Co-operative Schools across the country.

Co-operation is fun! We got a great sense of togetherness and mutual responsibility from playing ‘4 up’: a co-operative activity which only allows 4 people standing at any moment for a maximum of 30 seconds, without any speaking. We found we had to pay close attention to each other’s facial expressions and try to tell when people were about to sit down or stand up.

The workshop was finished by a short discussion of the problems faced by the co-operative movement, which ran into casual discussions over lunch and helped inform the spirit of our Open Space session after lunch.

“Fun, informative, challenging and inspiring, GREAT FOOD” - feedback on the weekend Open Space – an accessible way to hold discussions on a really broad theme We used Open Space to give people the chance to discuss anything under the umbrella of youth participation – things that had come up over the weekend, things that hadn’t got a mention at all, questions from the small and specific to grand and philosophical. Full notes of the discussions are on the following two pages.

(People & Planet do a nice guide to Open Space here: http://peopleandplanet.org/ goinggreener/skills/using-open-space )

There were a handful of issues we didn’t get round to...  Changing the perception that youth participation is only for vulnerable young people  How to engage more young people in participation / e-participation If you have ideas and answers on these, feel free to email them round the group so the person who raised the issue can benefit.

Open Space notes Challenge of working with a wide age range (8 – 18): how can we address this? (Jo, NDCS)  A younger and older board? = better participation  Natural limits of younger people  Younger people engaged at a more local level  Different roles for different members?  Case studies?  Local – national key link!  LOGISTICS  Mentoring from previous members  Get parents on board  Accessibility  Workshops around own experiences as a basis  Interacting with younger people – how??

How to involve children in care in your organisation? (Zac)  Advertisement  Organisations seek out LACs  It doesn’t matter about how many people Orgs like Woodcraft Folk could:  Communicate with care homes re curfews  Talk to Social Workers  Make sure you work with parents too  School  Word of mouth  Youth Centres  Children’s Care Council – and ask them to promote WCF in EVERY CITY

What factors limit genuine youth participation Strategies [to address these]  Living policies – recognise young people’s situations (in trusts, charities..) ? (Julie) Limiting factors:  Perceptions of what participation means  Vested interests  Funding  Time  Adults’ (teachers’) fear of change and lack of interest  Conflict with organisational values

Network for senior managers Training for young people Quotas Teacher training Social return on investment audit  Create an evidence base  National research project  Young people shouting about it eg videos etc (benefit to them and society)     

Is ‘representative’ participation (youth fora etc) reinforcing imbalances of power? (“youthwash”) (Kevin) They tend to report back to an authority. How can we encourage negotiation and partnership?

Youth Councils: Organisations do this well but not society – WCF  Yes it does / can! groups, Co-op Schools  Mirror adult structures  Review, monitoring and evaluation, impact –  Adult initiated ideas no space for review  Is one form of democracy  Reviewing structures  Reached a limit of [?]  Depends on the culture  Need true participation and  Encourage negotiation and partnership representative democracy  Training – for team members and adults

Do we have the adequate structures and mechanisms in place to enact our degree of social change?

We enact change in our co-operative community. Is this the same as social change ?

have we lost the need or fight for social change?

We have the structures, but to what extent are they effective?

The scale of change & scale of interests / groups Collaboration  Numbers  Partnership  Convergent co-operation – from the top as well as bottom up  Not exploiting our mechanisms  No surprise  Crowded market  Spread the idea of ‘co-operative year’ virally – promote using simple ways  Yes! We have the structures and mechanisms, it’s just much slower than we would want  Society has changed – is this proof?

-Overthrowing capitalism doesn’t need resources, structure, mechanisms… JUST PEOPLE!    

Mountains&Molehills The offline Twitter feed (complete with bird feeder—thanks Simon) Cadan ap Tomos@violacadan 10:23am Busy setting up, waiting for people to arrive! #wcf mm Outside the view looks surreal!

NDCS_UK YAB members just arrived in the peaks for the @ Woodcraft Folk #youthparticipation event @mountainmolehill. Excited #wcfmm Cadan ap Tomos @violacadan Surprised at how hard “I have five red apples” is to lip-read! Thanks @NDCS_UK #wcfmm @sheffieldya @sheffieldukyp @sheffieldyc Please follow&RT us.

Retweeted by @violacadan Woodcraft Folk @woodcraftfolk 3:41pm Lots of common challenges, should be good discussion #wcfmm

“My favourite memory is setting up the country’s first co-operative school and letting kids govern their school” - Ash Cadan ap Tomos@violacadan 10:23am Planning our own @votesat16 campaign with @platform51. Hope @woodcraftfolk can get it off the ground! #wcfmm We are coming to the end of the weekend, had a great time, we’ll miss it! @MountainsMolehill@NDCS_UK Verity: Sun shining too much for presentations—blooming Northern weather! : P

Half through the day@MountainMolehil.

Looking at what makes a team, representation and priority setting #youthparticipation #WCFMM

Jack: Open space at sunny Lockerbrook, how does your youth participation work? #wcfmm

I don’t use twitter but just to say an alright day so far and good meeting ppl.

Jay_Birdi Just got stuck to the ‘sticky wall’…suspicious at how it’s so sticky

Good presentation, curry soon.

@envisionuk—some great ideas for icebreakers and tools we can use for our sessions with young people!

Enjoying my time with @Platform51 #Woodcraft Folk “MPs are like lions & tigers—you have to see them in their own environment” from @Platform51

Finally a way of measuring just how dynamic our discussions are…360 strokes/minute on a palantypist’s keyboard - apparently that’s fast!

How would you involve an 11 year old?

young people’s participation for a stronger fairer future

Share the agenda in advance

Use lots of different activities, and lots of breaks and food!

Be clear what you are trying to achieve Avoid jargon – keep it simple!

Find out what you enjoy and want to achieve. I would find a suitable / relevant group for you to join and support you to integrate into the group. … reflect | plan | collaborate | act …

Some of the actions we said we’d take after the event:

Break into small groups at times but make sure you feed back.

Adapt and roll out Leading for the Future programme in co-operative schools!

Make sure that all of our videos are subtitled in future Use Kevin's “What if…” activity in training sessions Use games, ice breakers and toolkit with our yp.

Help the Steering Group to create memory books

Thank you for some really positive feedback on the practicesharing weekend, and lots of good ideas for improving the next one we do. We’ll be sure to invite you along!

We confirmed at the end of the weekend that all these expectations had been met by at least one person. We’re all enthusiastic about staying in touch and making sure the ‘first of many’ and ‘making new friends’ hopes come true.