Much of what you find in the pages of AGENDA, however, involves rather different ways of being or acting in the world: groups of young people who come together, often supported by adults, sometimes locally and sometimes across geographical areas, around particular issues of concern. These issues may be school-related but they often also go beyond that. Their voices are expressed in a range of ways – not just through talk at meetings, but creatively, through dance, visual art, zines, artefacts, banners, marches. They engage in concerted activism directed at politicians, headteachers and others in power, but also in more personal campaigns directed at peers. They may use social media such as blogs, vlogs, hashtags, memes, where they leave traces over time. They may ‘go viral’, become social movements known to a wider audience, and endure; or, they may be ephemeral as those involved move on to other matters and concerns. An individual young person may be involved in more than one such grouping at any one time, and across time.
The authors of Youthquake 2017, James Sloam and Matt Henn, argue that young people are “reinventing political activism”, participating through petitions, boycotts, demonstrations, online, rather than traditional electoral politics.They can be seen as ‘stand-by citizens’ who engage on a case by case basis where an issue resonates with them. Such activism may slip under the radar of politics as traditionally defined, but it is no less worthy of attention and respect.
The origins of AGENDA lie in just such action by small groups of young people writing Valentine cards to politicians, tweeting about the need for youth-led action to make positive relationships matter, with the support of academics, voluntary sector organisations, and others. One aim of AGENDA is to help educators to ‘see’ these groupings and forms of action, which sometimes fall outside conventional understandings of youth participation, to appreciate how they might work differently, and to learn from their creativity and energy. Schools matter here, too – they are places where staff and young people come together across social differences of age, gender, ethnicity, class, sexuality, and learn to live together. Schools can help young people make their voices heard, listen to other opinions and evidence, reflect on their own perspectives and take a broader view. They can mediate between voices to ensure that all are heard but that those that are hurtful, offensive or exclusionary do not dominate and ensure that practices of student voice promote rights, social justice, inclusion and diversity. AGENDA is an invitation to join these dialogues and publics.
Sevasti-Melissa Nolas at Goldsmiths College London describes these often informal groupings and forms of activism as ‘publics’, and is particularly interested in how they help us think about children and young people’s everyday lives and social action in new ways.
You can hear her in conversation with Professor Rachel Thomson discussing her research here and read an article she wrote about this for the National Children’s Bureau journal Children & Society here. Her blog is here.
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