Virginia Haworth-Galt argues that theres more to consultation than doing a survey.
The Youth Matters consultation in 2005 managed to include 19,000 responses from young people (one of the largest group responses to a Government consultation ever). This remarkable achievement has established a precedent, and we are all now encouraged to consult with young people albeit, thankfully, not so extensively.
In the arts, as in other sectors, few would argue with the value of consulting with young people, specifically around the services and resources we are planning to provide for them. This drive towards a culture of consultation forms part of a more general young peoples participation agenda. If we are working in youth arts we need to make sure we are delivering what young people want and not just what we think they need. In embarking on consultation with young people the question still remains, How do we do this effectively? There are some obvious problems: avoiding tokenism; achieving inclusivity; managing expectations; and covering the costs.
The Carnegie Young Peoples Initiative 2004 2007 (CYPI) is now winding to a close (http://cypi.carnegieuktrust.org.uk). Over the past three years they have worked to promote young peoples involvement in public decision-making but their findings are mixed. On the plus side they report that organisations now ask, How can we involve young people? and not Why should we involve young people? The impact of this may be partially negated by their findings that, young people have had little effect on decisions through participation exercises, and that some settings are particularly resistant to change& and the increased involvement of young people is mistakenly seen as inappropriate. They also flag up that more needs to be done to involve marginalised young people.
In order to avoid tokenism we need to value young peoples contribution and to acknowledge, credit and thank them. We need to be as inclusive as possible, not assume homogeneity (just like adults, they dont all want the same things) and find ways of including those who are harder to reach. We also need to look at the culture of our organisation. UNICEFs eight-step participation ladder has manipulation as the bottom rung with tokenism at number three and initiated shared decisions at the top. We may need support, training and new systems and new skills to carry out this consultation and help us get to the top of the ladder.
One of the problems of consulting with young people in the arts is in setting up an expectation that what we are consulting about is definitely going to happen (and very soon). The reality is likely to be that we are consulting prior to a funding application, which may or may not be successful and any project that did happen would certainly not happen for a while. For many youth arts organisations, and particularly those working with young people at risk, the young people we consult with may have moved on by the time the project begins. For them this whole experience has the potential to leave them feeling negative, let down and disappointed. We have to be clear about timescales and implied promises. As well as this, we can offer incentives to take part in the consultation so that an immediate benefit is perceived. Other benefits can include the development of transferable skills including thinking, decision making and articulation skills.
The CYPI have come up with a number of useful publications and some top tips, notably set aside time and money. What are the costs of genuine consultation and ongoing participation in management/decision-making? We all now habitually include evaluation as a budget heading in our funding applications our new habit needs to be to add consultation and participation of young people. How do we cost these out? Consider including staff time, venue hire, travel costs, incentives (record tokens, etc.) and refreshments. Consultations with harder to reach young people and with particular groups of them (such as young people with disabilities or those who dont have English as a first language) will require additional funding support.
Finally, just to place this back in a specific arts context, the following Arts Council England quote outlines why we as a sector need to continue to consult with young people: Young people are customers of the arts; the arts sector frequently engages children and young people as audiences, participants and makers& the arts sector needs to be clear about the aspirations and expectations of those young people& clarity comes best through consultation& involvement and evaluation, and through evaluation comes improvement.
Virginia Haworth-Galt is Director of Artswork.
w: http://www.artswork.org.uk