Celebration of Community and Youth Work in Manchester and the North-West as the Manchester University course sadly disappears

Posted on May 21, 2013 by Tony Taylor

For those of us, who have worked many a year in the North-West of England, the closure of the Manchester University Community and Youth Work course is hard to bear. Refusing to be downhearted the staff are organising a Celebration on Tuesday, May 28, details of which are to be found below. Tania de St Croix, a former student at Manchester herself, and Bernard Davies will be contributing to the event on behalf of our campaign. Speaking personally, as a former youth worker and youth officer in Wigan, I would love to be there, although I would bore folk to tears reminiscing about the tribulations and triumphs of the 1970′s and 1980′s.

Get in touch with Martin Purcell if you want to participate.

Martin Purcell

Lecturer, Applied Community and Youth Work Studies

University of Manchester

School of Education

A1.11 Ellen Wilkinson Building

Oxford Road

Manchester M13 9PE

Tel. (0161) 275 5795

www.manchester.ac.uk/

Time	Activity	Venue

09.00 – 10.30	Setting up stalls / exhibitions	Ellen Wilkinson AG3/4

10.30 – 12.00	Exhibition of first year students’ work on *Community Participation* in local community and youth work organisations (to be assessed by ACYWS tutors)	Ellen Wilkinson AG3/4

12.00 – 13.00	Lunch / Networking / Visiting Stalls	Ellen Wilkinson AG3/4, Café and Common Room

13.00 – 15.00	This is Youth Work: Telling & Sharing Stories IDYW workshop facilitated by Tania de St. Croix; see http://www.indefenceofyouthwork.org.uk/wordpress/?p=3017	Ellen Wilkinson AG3/4, 9 & 11

15.00 – 15.30	Refreshments / Networking / Visiting Stalls	Ellen Wilkinson AG3/4, Café and Common Room

15.30 – 17.00	Campaigning in the era of the Axeman: Choose Youth; In Defence of Youth Work & National Coalition for Independent Action. Discussion facilitated by ACYWS tutors, with input from Bernard Davies, Tania de St. Croix and Ian Richards; see http://www.chooseyouth.org/ ; http://www.indefenceofyouthwork.org.uk/wordpress/; http://www.independentaction.net/.	Ellen Wilkinson AG3/4

16.30 – 18.00	Introductory Community Philosophy Workshop Facilitated by Martin Purcell and Samira Bakkioui See http://www.sapere.org.uk/Default.aspx?tabid=102	Ellen Wilkinson AG3/4

18.00 – 19.30	Setting up stalls / exhibitions International Buffet / Networking / Visiting Stalls	Students’ Union Council Chamber

19.30	Welcome: Kate Sapin & Martin Purcell Applied Community & Youth Work Studies Programme
19.45	Celebrating youth and creativity: Gorse Hill Studios Dancers
20.15	Celebrating Community Development and Youth Work: Bernard Davies, National Coalition for Independent Action and In Defence of Youth Work
20.30	Celebrating youth and creativity: Yasmin – Brighter Sound
20.45	Celebrating Community Development and Youth Work: Summary of CYWU / Unite the Union campaigning; Ian Richards
21.00	Celebrating community and creativity: Reel MCR Film
21.30	Student / Community Performers
23.00	Thanks, End & Depart

Advancing Youth Work : A Transatlantic Conversation with Dana Fusco, June 19

Posted on May 21, 2013 by Tony Taylor

IN DEFENCE OF YOUTH WORK

ENGAGING CRITICALLY: A SERIES OF SEMINARS

ADVANCING YOUTH WORK IN TIMES OF AUSTERITY

LOCALLY, NATIONALLY AND INTERNATIONALLY

A TRANSATLANTIC CONVERSATION with DANA FUSCO

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 19 FROM 1.30 TO 4.30 P.M.

AT THE UNISON CENTRE, EUSTON ROAD, LONDON

Over the coming period our campaign is committed to encouraging an open and pluralist debate about the state of youth work today. In our view there has been a conspicuous lack of collective discussion about the dramatic shifts in the landscape of work with young people. Given youth work’s claim to a reflective and self-critical tradition this is more than a touch ironic.

We are delighted to embark on this process in the company of Dana Fusco, Professor of Teacher Education at York College of the City University of New York. For the past twenty years her research has focused on youth development and after-school intervention leading to national and international recognition. Fascinatingly, given our own emphasis on story-telling, Dana recently was writing with colleagues on the ‘Squeezing of Youth Voice and Agency during Out-of-School Time’, calling for stories and testimonies. Dana’s most recent work is the acclaimed ‘Advancing Youth Work: Current Trends, Critical Questions’, of which she is editor. And as we write she is seeking contributions for a forthcoming book on Youth Work and Inequality – see our web site for details.

The afternoon will see Dana’s central contribution sandwiched between sharing experiences in small groups, a wider Question and Comment session with an emphasis on building links with each other – across towns, cities, countries and oceans!

As ever with IDYW the cost will be kept low – Unwaged/Students £2, Waged £5. In doing so we are grateful to UNISON for their support in providing the venue.

To book a place, contact Tony at tonymtaylor@gmail.com

Dana Fusco June 19 flyer – please circulate around your networks

APOLOGIES FOR THIS POST BEING CRUSHED!! WILL TRY TO SORT OUT LATER!

Dramatic Scenes in Haringey : Leader admits the error of his ways

Posted on May 19, 2013 by Tony Taylor

Unmissable footage of the Leader admitting he should have listened to the young people of Haringey.

UNITE highlights the growth of unpaid internships in the voluntary sector

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Tony Taylor

Sally Kosky, National Officer, UNITE the union writes:

Unite is calling for an end to unpaid internships in the voluntary sector and the re-introduction of paid entry level jobs.

Our report ‘Unpaid Internships in the Voluntary Sector’ demonstrates that unpaid internships are on the increase. They are becoming the fastest growing source of abuse under the National Minimum Wage regulations. Unpaid internships aren’t just wrong but in many cases they are illegal. Under employment law, people who work set hours, do set tasks and contribute value to an organisation are “workers” and are entitled to the National Minimum Wage but many employers in the voluntary sector are paying their interns nothing.

We need your help to stop this, and to help the thousands of unpaid interns. Click here to sign your support to this campaign and tell us how your organisation treats interns.

We are also strongly urging all reasonable employers who care about their workers to sign up to a voluntary code that pledges they will end unpaid internships and pay all interns at least the National Minimum Wage. Please ask your employer to sign up to this pledge which you can view here.

Young People can do great things – CSV Poster Design competition

Posted on May 14, 2013 by Tony Taylor

News of a poster design competition from the charity Community Service Volunteers [CSV], which happily doesn’t forget, but is rooted in its own history.

Young people can do great things…

CSV launch poster design competition to champion young people

This spring, young people are being challenged to show off their artistic talents in a poster design competition – #giveachance – run by the charity CSV (Community Service Volunteers).

The competition revives a nationwide poster competition run by the charity in 1984, which carried the strapline: Young people can do great things… if you give us a chance.

Keeping the original 1984 strapline, we want 2013’s generation of young people to show us their artistic talents by designing their own posters, championing young people and the great things they are capable of achieving.

As in 1984 young people are under attack. The increase in tuition fees, the prevalent culture of unpaid internships, and sky-high youth unemployment all make it hard for young people to shine.

CSV has always worked with young people to highlight their unique contributions to society, from its Springboard projects helping young people into work and training, to providing volunteering opportunities to help others.

Entering is simple. We’re inviting people to tweet their designs mentioning @CSV_UK and using the hashtag #giveachance, or upload to Facebook mentioning CSV’s page (www.facebook.com/CSVUK). Alternatively designs can be emailed to web@csv.org.uk

Catherine Flood, Curator of Prints at the Victoria and Albert Museum and author of British Posters: Advertising, Art and Activism, will select the winning competition entry and all entries will be displayed on the CSV #giveachance Pinterest board. The winning and commended designs will be displayed at a special exhibition at Springboard Hackney, and the winner will also receive a signed copy of British Posters.

The competition launches on Monday 13th May 2013 and closes at midnight on 10th June 2013.

About the campaign:

The poster competition is part of CSV’s ‘Volunteer Champions’ campaign, celebrating the role volunteers play in changing lives everyday across the UK.

How you can get involved:

Please show your support for the CSV #giveachance competition by writing about is on your blog or encouraging your social media followers by either tweeting on Twitter using the hashtag #giveachance or sharing our campaign on your Facebook timeline.

For more information visitwww.csv.org.uk/postercompetition

For competition promotional images please visit our dropbox folder.

Contact:

For more information or images please contact Alice Haworth-Booth

- Email: alicehb@gmail.com

- Tel: 07854928926

Youth Work and Schools : External and complementary, not internal and supplementary!

Posted on May 7, 2013 by Tony Taylor

To be honest we are a bit slow in catching up with the following National Youth Agency initiative, taken in late March.

New commission into the role of youth work in education

The National Youth Agency has launched an independent commission to assess the value of youth work within formal education across England and Wales.

The commission is being chaired by former Children’s Minister Tim Loughton MP and made up of key figures from both the youth work and education sectors including:

Fiona Blacke, Chief Executive, National Youth Agency
Baroness Beverley Hughes
Rosina St James, Chair of the British Youth Council
Mark Carriline, Executive Director of Children’s Services, Bury Council
Damian Allen, Director, Children and Young People Division, Children’s Society
Ndidi Okezie, Executive Director – Regions, Teach First

The National Youth Agency’s initial research has identified that the emphasis on a set of core academic skills has the potential to squeeze out another set of skills – how to think creatively, collaborate, empathise at the very time when they are needed more than ever.

Youth work has a key role in helping young people develop these abilities, as some schools have started to recognise.

The commission is keen to gather evidence and involve as many stakeholders as possible, including young people. Contribute your views by filling out our short survey.

To view the commission’s launch press release click here.

Our provisional response is as follows :

A discussion about the relationship between formal schooling and informal youth work is always worth having. However in the present climate we fear that the Commission’s predetermined desire to define interventions as youth work, which previously might have been called, for example, Personal and Social Education, Careers Advice, Pastoral Care or even Remedial Education is another moment in the continuing dilution of youth work as a distinctive educational practice founded on a voluntary relationship with young people. Youth Work as informal education in the service of young people must retain a clear independence from schools. It is external and complementary, not internal and supplementary.

And, given the NYA’s scant regard for history, it is necessary to note that a debate about this relationship is nothing new. Educational fashions come and go. Merely as an example, the issue was at the heart of tensions in the 1969 Milson-Fairbairn report. Bernard Davies in analysing the report points out the general feeling held over forty years ago maintained that “secondary school curricula and methods needed to become more responsive, especially to pupils reluctant to stay on. A more strategic youth service infiltration into formal education was thus seen as having great potential benefits for schools.”

In addition see our post Youth Clubs in Schools, which includes a link to a very relevant piece by Bernard on ‘Extended Schooling : Lessons for Youth Workers’.

Have a look at the NYA stuff, complete the survey and let us know your thoughts.

Youth Work and Inequality : Write for a new book, apply for a new job!

Posted on May 3, 2013 by Tony Taylor

We’ve received a note from Dana Fusco, Professor of Teacher Education at the University of New York and editor of ‘Advancing Youth Work : Current Trends, Critical Questions’.

Seeking practitioners whose work passionately reflects addressing youth inequality and who are interested in writing about it for an upcoming book on the topic! We are accepting abstracts of 250-500 words that should draw heavily on the practice context. Final decisions for submissions will be made by September 2013. Email abstracts to dfusco@york.cuny.edu by June 1st. Please share widely as we are aiming for broad global reach. 20 chapters from around the world. We will take three or so from U.K.

If there are any of our supporters, who feel they have something to say, but are somewhat intimidated by the thought of writing a chapter, get in touch with Tony to chat things through. And you are not alone if you are a touch anxious. In truth there are more than a few across our ranks, who are brilliant at articulating their thoughts in speech, but freeze at the sight of a blank piece of paper!!

This is an appropriate moment also to flag that Dana will be the keynote speaker at our next IDYW seminar on the afternoon of Wednesday, June 19 at the UNISON centre, Euston Road, London. More information to follow, but put the date in your diary. And, while we’re at it, given our parochialism and often ignorance of youth work outside our shores, here is the link to an informative and challenging piece by Dana about youth work and youth work education in the USA,

Working in youth serving organizations: The sphere of professional education

—————————————————————————————————————————————–

Meanwhile closer to home it is heartening – given the shifting landscape in defining youth work - to see the following statement in the initial job details for a Senior Lecturer : Youth and Community Work at the Manchester Metropolitan University.

The successful candidate will have experience of and commitment to critical approaches in informal education in community settings. S/he will have used creative approaches and will have experience of participatory approaches to youth and community work practice. S/he will have explored and experienced the power of critical dialogue in work with community /youth groups. S/he will have experienced what it means to be part of a ‘learning team’ and have engaged well with a range of communities such as are found in diverse and fragmented urban contexts.

Further details here. For an informal discussion regarding the requirements of the role please contact Janet Batsleer (j.batsleer@mmu.ac.uk)

Living Our Values, Working Our Values : Critical Reflections on being a Youth Work Cooperative

Posted on April 29, 2013 by Tony Taylor

As something of a welcome antidote to the persistent propaganda about commissioning/competition in the world of youth work, here’s a chance to hear another side of the story.

Fionn Gregg of Voice of Youth gets in touch to say:

I am emailing you as I think you may be interested, or at least know others who are interested in this event and our workers co-operative. We are a youth workers co-op based in Hackney, East London. We run two youth clubs and do detached work, much like any other youth organisation… however, we are set up and run differently – as a co-operative! We believe in the following principles:
1. Young people choose whether and how to become involved with our groups and work.
2. Our work starts from the needs and wishes of young people in Hackney and all funding bids will reflect this.
3. We involve young people in taking action to improve their own lives and the lives of their communities;
4. We promote equality and challenge oppressive structures in society, institutions, groups and individuals, including in our own organisation.
5. We promote co-operative decision making in our own work, in our youth groups and in the communities where we work. …and that to work in this way with young people, it is important to work in a co-operative, equal manner as an organisational structure. Hence the co-operative!

Lads will be Lads in Higher Education and even Youth Work? What’s the Score?

Posted on April 18, 2013 by Tony Taylor

A few weeks ago at the Youth and Policy History conference I offered a workshop, in which I revisited critically an article, ‘Working with Young Males : Towards an Anti-Sexist Practice’, written in 1981. At heart it was a response to the remarkable flowering of feminist youth work at that time and the questions this posed for work with the lads. We had a stimulating discussion about the paper’s strengths and weaknesses, its absences and silences. In the end we agreed that the discussion needed to continue, but that it needed to be more firmly grounded in current practice.

Anti-Sexism conference 1980!

As I’ve been pondering the next step an interesting piece of research has recently emerged, entitled ‘That’s what she said : Women students’ experiences of ‘lad culture’ in higher education’. It opens by stating:

It seems that ‘lad culture’ is suddenly everywhere in
higher education. ‘Banter’ on social media; student
nights at the local club; initiations to join a sports
team – all seem influenced by an element of ‘lad
culture’. For many, this seems an unproblematic trend,
just a new way of structuring and understanding the
way students have fun. But there have also been
worrying accounts, particularly from women students,
about the negative impact and harm that ‘lad culture’
is having on their educational experiences and indeed
their lives more broadly.

Credit to sotontab.co.uk

For the moment I wonder if you might look at this research and see if it has any resonance with the world of youth work today. An early section attempts to define ‘lad culture’.

Described as founded upon a trinity of ‘drinking, football
and fucking’, contemporary ‘laddism’ can be seen as
young, hedonistic and largely centred on homosocial
bonding. This often consists of ‘having a laugh’,
objectifying women and espousing politically incorrect
views. It has been linked with the phenomenon of
‘raunch culture’, which has been theorised as an oversexualised
cultural form based on men objectifying
women and encouraging them to objectify themselves,
and which is associated with the mainstreaming of the
erotic industries and the normalisation of sexual
violence. ‘Laddism’ is also thought to be currently
gaining a great deal of social and cultural power, and
has been described as the template of masculinity for
contemporary young British males.

Read in full – That’s what she said report Final web pdf

For a contrary view Spiked accuses the National Union of Students of leading a ‘prissy war on ‘lad culture’.

This research is hardly neutral. The NUS commissioned academics from the Centre for Gender Studies at the University of Sussex carry it out, among focus groups of 40 female students from across Britain. The report admits that ‘our findings cannot be classified as representative’, since most interviews were with middle-class ‘white, British undergraduates’. More strikingly, 76 per cent of respondents classified themselves as feminists. Contrast that to a recent survey that found only eight per cent of British women aged 20 to 24 called themselves feminists. This is straightforward advocacy research, designed to boost with a phony evidence base a prejudice that already exists among student leaders.

Any thoughts on the validity of the research and more broadly whether you think we should organise a future IDYW event looking afresh at work with young men would be much appreciated.

In Defence of Youth Work

"that is volatile and voluntary, creative and collective – an association and conversation without guarantees."

Author Archives: Tony Taylor