Community Focus – Weve got issues

Youth arts activity has an important and vital role to play in dealing with some of the issues facing young people, claims Virginia Haworth-Galt.

In 2001, youth art practitioners from across England gathered for the Youth Arts Odyssey conferences and spent a total of six days grappling with key questions relating to the future of youth arts. One of the stated aims of the conference was to finally agree an encompassing and defining statement of exactly what youth arts is.

But a feisty and truly diverse sector like ours refused to be pinned down by one definition, no matter how comprehensive we tried to make it. A definitive label was seen as offering no genuine value: it was felt it would either be too cumbersome and unwieldy (and still exclude) or would be bland and pointless. Even if we could have agreed on something that might have captured the intangibility of youth arts, it would quickly have been outdated and irrelevant. We remain joyfully undefined and are pleased to celebrate our flexibility and fluidity.

Richard Ings conference report Taking it seriously  youth arts in the real world summarises and analyses those debates. He states that youth arts is different from formal education because it includes arts activity as an end in itself and as a means of delivering other aspects of personal and social education. This is referring to the role we play in delivering what is called issue-based youth arts.

Research by the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) and the National Youth Agency proves that the arts are a powerful and effective way of addressing issues affecting young people at risk. The drive for issue-based work reflects the influence of the youth-work sector. Back in 1867, the Reverend Arthur Sweatman made his case for youths institutes based on his belief that young mens peculiar wants are evening recreation, companionship, an entertaining but healthy literature, useful instruction, and a strong guiding influence to lead them onward and upward socially and morally. Informal education is embedded in the very fabric of youth work and is motivated by a desire to ensure the general welfare of young people. In the 1970s, the emerging community arts sector, and more specifically the youth arts branch, carried this desire forward with a determination to harness young peoples creative energy to help meet these needs.

Youth arts have been used effectively to explore a vast array of subjects affecting young people. These include sexual and mental health, racism, bullying and parenting. In youth justice settings, youth arts practices have been deployed to help young people examine the roots of their criminal behaviour and look towards developing a stronger self-discipline and greater ability to take responsibility for their own actions (NFER). Issue-based youth arts works at a personal and individual level allowing each young person to have an opportunity to understand themselves and their choices in more depth. It also operates at a social and community level, providing a better understanding of how behaviour and actions impact on others and showing alternative views and pathways.

It can be delivered in any artform you like. In Manchester in 2004, Unity Youth Arts and Sounds used music to explore issues relevant to young black men. They also used drama to investigate what it means to be a teenager in modern society, and sculpture and visual arts to look at global and local politics. Ludus Dance Company, based in Lancaster, specialise in issue-based contemporary dance theatre with performance-related workshops. They aim to use the arts to engage with young people emotionally and intellectually and their piece Sold looked at child exploitation. They state a desire to avoid the guilt trip approach and, instead, seek to engender a positive sense of responsibility and a belief that the individual can make a difference. The National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts is using its futurelab to support innovation in educational systems. Working with Hi8us in Birmingham they have developed an e-drama targeted at young people at risk in the Telford area. Fictional scenarios allow young people to explore issues including citizenship and personal and social development.

Finally one of the many exciting things about the new Arts Awards for young people is that they can be delivered in any setting. It is entirely conceivable that a youth arts project designed to look at a specific issue could, for an individual young person, spiral into an opportunity to gain a qualification and a whole new outlook on life.

Virginia Haworth-Galt is Director of Artswork, an independent youth arts development agency.
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