The truth about youth

This summer I was working on a project at The Royal Exchange Theatre, which was part of its two year Truth about Youth programme. I was lucky enough to be involved in the planning and delivery of the project because I am a trustee of a youth leadership and mentoring project called Reclaim, which was running the project for The Royal Exchange. (www.reclaimproject.org.uk)

The project’s aim was to open the door to the arts world to 20 young people from disadvantaged areas of Manchester. These young people were nominated onto the project by their teachers as those who showed passion and real promise in the arts, but faced barriers to achieving in their field, or barriers to enjoying the cultural offerings that are, in theory, open to them.
Some were singers, rappers, writers, artists, dancers, actors. All of them were nervous about the project and weren’t quite sure what we were going to be throwing at them, but were willing to give things a go.
They had a full schedule, ranging from engaging with the public about what the perceived truth about youth is, mystery shopping arts venues around Manchester and Greater Manchester to see how young people were treated and what was available for them to do. Responses varied from being asked to leave the building because they had accidentally wandered into an archive area, being completely ignored, and engaged with properly. They learned public speaking and presentation skills, and were shown how to make their stories interesting, and how to challenge the prevailing stereotype that young people are not worth listening to. Each young person was interviewed by the media, ranging from bloggers and papers to radio stations. (http://www.culturalshenanigans.co.uk/2011/08/05/tell-me-the-truth-about-...) In the final week they were to produce a showcase, of their different talents, but also to present back the findings of what the Truth about Youth is.
And then the riots changed the project. On the Wednesday morning the atmosphere was awful. There were tears, there was anger and there was confusion. Everyone was glad that we were part of a project and could engage with each other and work through our feelings instead of being at home by ourselves. We abandoned our schedule for the week and focussed instead on dealing with what the riots meant and how we would challenge the negative stereotypes of young people, now both even harder to do but also with the kind of focus on that subject that we had not anticipated.
Young people from the group spoke on BBC Radio Manchester, BBC North West, and on the Sky News special debate on the riots. They showed a different side to the young people that the mass media portrayed. The producers had called Reclaim asking for someone to comment on the riots, and thankfully were open to the suggestion of those spokespeople being the young people themselves. We were in part able to empower the young people, and address their feeling of helplessness because of good media relationships.
As arts organisations, and in particular the communications departments, it is our job to build positive relationships with our media, not just to sell tickets for the next show, but to build and influence the narrative that is being created. In the arts we are excellently placed to comment on working with vulnerable and disenfranchised groups, and we know best of all that the labels given to them for funding purposes or simply to create an interesting project, belies the individuals behind the ‘tick box’ descriptions. And so it is our responsibility, when lazy journalism is allowed to set the tone of the narrative and create the ‘truth’, to break that pattern.
Too often the education and outreach departments are separate to the rest of the organisation. For example in some theatres where the work of the education department has little bearing on what happens on stage and what tickets are sold for. Or the communications departments don’t know what is happening in their own education departments and so the journalists only ever hear of the next big show and nothing about the more interesting stories we have to tell.
Arts organisations need to invest properly in their marketing, outreach and PR strategies and relationships, there is more at stake than ticket sales. We have a lot to say – even more so when other people are saying things we know to be wrong.
The original aims of our project were met, but we got there in a very different way to how we initially imagined.