Taking a journey

With young people in the news for all the wrong reasons once again and with youth services and programmes being early victims of government cuts, the project described in Taking a Journey seems even more significant than it did back in 2005.  My report, which was eventually published two years later, describes an innovative approach to reaching young people that agencies and services had not been able to engage before.  The initiative was the brainchild of Simon Dear, then at the Children's Fund on the Isle of Wight, who saw that young people themselves might help to solve this problem by being directly involved in discussions about their situation and asked how they thought services might be improved or made more relevant to them.  The third annual 'Big Day Out' of this novel consultation with young people put the arts centre stage, bringing a range of versatile theatre and music practitioners together with young people in a field beside Brading Roman Villa.  What this report does is explore the practical business – and outcomes – of a participatory arts project that found a positive politics in communal creativity.  There are hints here of how we might still pull back from the brink.

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