At the recent OurCity2030 Youth Practitioners’ and Educators’ Forum we trialled a new online format, as we continue to explore the best way to bring youth practitioners and education providers together to learn from each other.
The event convened organisations including Bristol City Council, Cabot Learning Federation (CLF), Bristol City of Sanctuary, and South Bristol Youth, as well as independent creative activists and entrepreneurs. Participants discussed contemporary challenges to youth empowerment and how community-based initiatives and best practices can foster hope for young people’s future.
The event included a panel discussion with Charlotte Smith (Support Programme Lead, Babbasa), Clayton Planter (Founder and CEO, Street2Boardroom), MoYah (Artist, Activist, Curator), and Jasaulla Khan (Youth Ambassador for Babbasa’s Challenge Programme).
Four key points arose from the panel discussion:
Ethnically minoritised young people distrust the UK’s criminal justice system due to their historic and contemporary experience with institutional bias and racism. Charlotte Smith cited the Lammy Review 2017 and the Steven Lawrence Inquiry 2014 as evidence of the UK criminal justice system’s institutional issues which disproportionately impact young Black men from African, Caribbean, Mixed and Other backgrounds. The demographic is most vulnerable to police brutality and violence and overrepresented in police stop and search statistics. Mistrust and tension between racialised young people and criminal justice institutions has persisted since the 1980s; violent police riots and passivity to calls for change contribute to this strained dynamic.
Societal obstacles limit marginalised and hard-to-reach youth’s access to employment opportunities. Clayton Planter’s organisation, Street2Boardroom was set up to respond to the needs of vulnerable young people exposed to criminality and youth gang violence who have been neglected by society. These young people have struggled to reintegrate society due to their criminal record, their stigmatisation by the public, and exclusionary screening and recruitment practices at companies which limit young people’s employment opportunities and negatively impact their confidence.
Creative and diverse community-based initiatives help young people build their confidence and sense of purpose. MoYah underscored the value of the arts in our society and the need to create more pathways for creative opportunities to foster more sustainable socio-economic routes for young artists, specifically those from disadvantaged backgrounds. He explained that art should be recognised as a valuable tool for young people to shape society; in Senegal hip hop artists led a successful youth resistance movement to topple a disgraced president, and in Malaysia, hip hop artists also led successful campaigns for politicians running for national elections.
Youth-led social action projects have a positive impact in their local community. Jasaulla Khan stressed that the soft skills and professional experience gained through social action initiatives (event planning, campaigning, fundraising) enable young people, like himself, to grow in confidence, apply transferable skills in other areas of their life, and continuously engage in issues impacting their local community. His experience on Babbasa’s Challenge Programme served as a case study illustrating the value of social action initiative.
This was followed by three moderated discussions responding to questions on the challenges, opportunities, and solutions for youth educators and educators to advance youth empowerment:
What can we do to rebuild trust between young people and criminal justice institutions in the UK?
How are we supporting young people to create a brighter future for themselves? What else needs to be done?
How can social action projects empower young people to make a positive difference in their local community?
Closing remarks were provided by Sangeetha Wynter (Head of Services, Babbasa), aiming to galvanise youth practitioners and educators to converge their capacity and skillset to empower and provide pathways for marginalized young people to access opportunities for work.
Feedback from the event was that 100% of participants felt the Forum helped them foster connections for collaborative learning and were interested in collaborating with Babbasa on future initiatives and projects advancing the goals of OurCity2030.
The word cloud below shows the results of the audience poll of suggested topics of discussion for future Forums.
Commentaires