Written by Paul Strauss & Keri Facer, Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol www.bristol80by18.org.uk
MOBILISING A CITY FOR LEARNING Lessons from the 80by18 Project
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For me 80by18 is showing you that there's so much more to do in the city than you thought was possible. lt can make you feel a bit differently on life actually, seeing that there's so much to do and that you've got to set yourself goals cos you might not be able to do them all in the future
(80by18 Young Researcher) Contact information 3
Contact information
Keri Facer Graduate School of Education University of Bristol 35 Berkeley Square Bristol BS8 1JA
Email - [email protected] Twitter - @80by18 Acknowledgements 4
Acknowledgements
Large numbers of people gave their time, their expertise and their goodwill to create the 80by18 resource. Over 200 came to face-to-face events, hundreds of others suggested ideas and offered support and encouragement. We are hugely grateful to all who contributed. Thanks in particular to the children and teachers of all the schools who participated.
We need to give particular thanks however to two groups of people: First, our First Partners who gave us the courage to get this going and who are such important allies in advocating for young people’s rights to fully participate in the city: Steve Sayers (Windmill Hill City Farm), Hannah Higginson (Watershed), Roger Opie (Ablaze), Nicholas Garrick (Lighting Up Learning), Tim Leaman (ASDAN), Philippa Bayley (Cabot Institute, Bristol Uni), Sam Thomson (UWE), Reethah Desai (Mshed), Shawn Sobers (UWE), Chris Luffingham (Independent), Hugh Thomas (MyFutureMyChoice), Alison Crowther (facilitator) as well as to Sandra Stancliffe (English Heritage) and Matt Little (RIO) who have been active supporters throughout. Second, our thanks are also due to the web development team and the team working at the University without whose work, and significant extra effort behind the scenes, 80by18 just wouldn’t exist: Matthew Moutos, Lizzie Packham, Lindsey Horner, Clara Lemon (website), Dan Tagg (website), Ben Carruthers (design), Teresa Nurser and Mary O’Connell. Any errors and omissions of course, are our own.
This project was funded as part of the RCUK/AHRC Connected Communities Programme (Leadership Fellowship) Contents 5
Contents Executive summary 6
Executive summary
●● The 80by18 Project is an ongoing Bristol initiative that aims: Background research 1. To identify and mobilise the organisations, places, spaces of the city with over 150 young that could offer interesting and challenging future-facing experiences people from diverse for young people; backgrounds across 2. To make these resources visible to young people online along with Bristol identified that resources to help them access them; and young people were keen to explore and 3. To actively encourage young people to participate in these find out about experiences. resources in the city ●● The project is premised on the assumption that cities are potentially powerfully rich resources for young people’s learning that are too often untapped; that young people have a right to participate in the public, civic and commercial lives of cities and to influence what happens there; and that the sorts of contemporary economic, technological and environmental challenges that young people are facing requires young people to participate in activities and experiences that simply cannot be provided by schools alone.
●● To realise these aims, the project has involved
1. a city-wide engagement process to identify the resources of the city that might support young people’s learning and development and
2. the creation of a website that showcases ’80 things to do in Bristol before you are 18’ and guidance to help young people achieve the challenge. Executive summary 7
●● A public call for ideas for the list involved over 1000 people in consultation processes and over 500 young people in workshops. To uncover resources outside the familiar ‘high status’ activities of the Drawing city required street consultation and face to face workshops. on Bristol’s Future facing resources ●● Experiences on the list had to:
1. Use Bristol assets Encourage, 2. Be interesting for young people challenge and excite young people 3. Face the future.
●● The call generated 617 ideas, which were curated into a final list of 80. The call also surfaced a significant number of resources – information, events, activities and materials - that could not have been identified The 80by18 sweet spot through any other process.
●● 8 themes emerged from these ideas. These were proposals for experiences that:
1. Allow young people to act as citizens (‘Worldchanging’ category),
2. Offer opportunities for play (‘City as Playground’ category),
3. Offer a distinctive ‘Bristol’ experience (‘Random’ category), Executive summary 8
4. Offer opportunities for reflection and tranquillity (‘Slow Down’ category),
5. Connect children with their past and address hard questions about where we come from (‘Back to the Future’ category),
6. Build children’s capacity to live well in conditions of change (‘Take a Risk’ category)
7. Encourage them to develop practical skills (see ‘Survive and Thrive’ category)
8. Encourage their creativity and self-reliance (see ‘Do it ourselves’ category).
●● Three organisations (Oxfam, BBC, Bristol Bike Project) volunteered specific additional ‘offers’ to the young people of the city. Cultural, public sector and civic organisations have been more forthcoming than businesses in showcasing their resources. Over 250 organisations are represented on the list.
●● The pilot website was launched in November 2013, and has been taken up as a project and integrated into the activities of primary schools, South Bristol Youth Consortium and Girl Guides units.
●● Research into how the list could be used as resource for young people was conducted from January – July 2014, with teenagers recruited as peer researchers. Executive summary 9
●● Findings revealed the element of challenge was a significant motivator. Impact included:
• Increased independent mobility around the city • Less uncertainty, fear, and increased confidence to access spaces and interact with host-organisations outside of cultural milieux
• New knowledge about organisations and their relationship to city resources
• Exposure to and positive reflection on different ways of learning including increased attention to the sensory and the material
●● The list can be used in a relatively ‘light touch’ manner by young people on their own to encourage mobility and exploration of the city; the more challenging activities and resources required some adult mediation and support, but offered greater benefits in terms of understanding and engaging with city resources.
●● Where the resource was used in schools, there is some evidence to suggest that it has the potential to enhance school-parent relations, to enable families new to England to better understand the resources available in the local area, and to enhance teachers’ understanding of how to use the city for learning.
●● The project has been well received in its pilot year. It has had an initial strong impact on a relatively small group of young people who have been exposed to it, but further work is needed to ensure awareness of the resource amongst families, young people and schools across the city. Executive summary 10
●● The research with young people has identified the significant role played by friendship groups in mediating and enabling access to public spaces and cities for young people. Friendship groups have the potential to play an important role in enabling more independent exploration of cities. Cultural and other organisations (as well as parents) wishing to encourage young people’s autonomy and city-participation should consider carefully how to design and support activities for friendship groups as well as families and school visits.
●● The pilot also demonstrated the significant potential benefits to be had in terms of cross-cultural understanding by encouraging young people to simply visit and get to know organisations in culturally different parts of the city. A within-city twinning project might provide a valuable next step.
●● The website and the network that the project has built around learning in the city is now being further developed in collaboration with core city partners, organisations and individuals interested in contributing to this agenda, or in using 80by18 to develop activities to support young people, are encouraged to contact us directly. Introduction: Why mobilise a city for learning? 11
Introduction: Why mobilise a city for learning?
Whose job is it to equip children for the future? Is it the role of parents and families? Is it the role of schools, colleges and universities? Or is it also a collective social responsibility in which we all – civil society, businesses, custodians of public spaces – can participate?
The 80by18 project described in this report is an ongoing attempt to explore whether and how this third ‘resource’ – the city – might be mobilised to offer a rich variety of experiences that are educational in the broadest, most challenging and exciting sense. It is premised on the assumption that cities are potentially powerfully rich resources for young people’s learning that are too often untapped; that young people have a right to participate in the public, civic and commercial lives of cities and to influence what happens there; and that the sorts of contemporary economic, technological and environmental challenges that young people are facing requires young people to participate in activities and experiences that simply cannot be provided by schools alone.
The project itself is an experimental and necessarily imperfect solution to this aspiration. It does, however, trace out some of the routes we might take if we want, as a society, to more effectively acknowledge and harness the role of this usually silent ‘third partner’ in the processes of bringing up our children. The aim of this report, then, is to describe the process of creating the 80by18 project as a resource to help other educators, city planners and civil society groups who may be interested in the question – how can we mobilise a city to support children’s learning?
What is the 80by18 project? In terms of its organisation, funding and purpose, it is a project that was initiated by Keri Facer, at the University of Bristol, as part of her AHRC Leadership Fellowship for the Connected Communities programme, and developed with Paul Strauss, also University Introduction: Why mobilise a city for learning? 12
of Bristol, in collaboration with a core group of cultural, educational, business and community organisations across the city of Bristol (see note 2). It was a project that might be described as ‘activist scholarship’; in other words, research that aims to build understanding about the world not just by studying it, but by making a positive intervention from which we might learn.
In terms of its ‘product’, at its simplest, 80by18 is a website that lists ’80 things to do in Bristol before you are 18’. It showcases experiences, activities and resources across all areas of the city from culinary adventures to physical challenges to encounters across social and cultural divides.
Underpinning the website and the research process, however, are a more ambitious set of aims:
1. To identify and mobilise the organisations, places, spaces of the city that could offer interesting and challenging future-facing experiences for young people;
2. To make these resources visible to young people online along with resources to help them access them; and
3. To actively encourage young people to participate in these experiences.
This report tells the story of the development of this list – the people, groups, institutions and practices involved in developing a resource that attempts to showcase a city to its young people – and the new challenges and demands that this process raises once such possibilities become visible. In so doing, it also tells other stories: the story of the strengths and shortcomings of university-based researchers attempting to play a role in supporting collaboration across multiple public institutions, civil society organisations, Introduction: Why mobilise a city for learning? 13
businesses and communities; a story that is closely tied to the place it is concerned with, Bristol, and to the distinctive social, economic and geographic features of that city; and finally, a story of one attempt to collaboratively build a public good at a time when austerity measures are encouraging competition and division in education, in youth services, in social care and in cultural provision.
This report is designed for a wide audience of educators, youth services, researchers and city leaders. We hope it is useful and sparks other possibilities amongst readers. We discuss the process of creating the 80by18 list – how do you learn enough about a city to fully represent its potential to young people? We conclude by describing some early research into the uses of the 80by18 list by young people in the city, and the indications this presents for fruitful future directions both for this project and for others seeking to mobilise their own cities for the benefit of young people. Introduction: Why mobilise a city for learning? 14
The child in the city or the school in the city?
‘The city is in itself an environmental education, and can be used to provide one, whether we are thinking about learning through the city, learning about the city, learning to use the city, to control the city or to change the city.’ Colin Ward, The Child in the City, 1978
The 80by18 project emerges from an urgent concern (which we have expressed elsewhere1) that schools are unable, on their own, to provide the range of experiences that will equip young people for the highly challenging economic, environmental and technological conditions of the mid 21st century. It starts from the assumption that these changing conditions cannot simply result in demands for schools, which have only finite resources, to do more and more. Instead, the project starts from the assumption that we need to mobilise the much broader network of cultural, economic, social and public resources that have the potential to offer a rich diversity of experiences for young people. The challenge, however, is how best to make these visible and enable young people to connect with these resources, 1 institutions and practices. Facer, K (2011) Learning Futures: Education, Technology and Social Change, London: This observation is not in and of itself novel. Indeed, the 80by18 project Routledge draws on a tradition of educational research, writing, and experimentation 2 over at least the last fifty years which has involved – at various points – See for example, Facer, K (2009) Towards an Area Based Curriculum, London: RSA; Lupton, teachers, youth workers, town planners, and teachers. This tradition is R (2010) “Area-based initiatives in English described in more detail elsewhere2. However, in order to make clear that education: what place for place and space?.” the relationship between children and learning in the city that we are In Education and Poverty in Affluent Countries, ed. Raffo, C., Dyson, A., Gunter, H., Hall, D., imagining here is categorically not inspired by the discourse and traditions Jones, L. & Kalambouka, A, New York: of ‘academy sponsorship’, it is perhaps best to turn to Colin Ward as a Routledge; Facer, K and Thomas, L (2012) Towards an Area Based Curriculum: Making starting point. Space for the City In Schools, International Journal of Educational Research Introduction: Why mobilise a city for learning? 15
In The Child in the City (1978), as well as in various articles in the journal Bulletin of Environmental Education, Ward set out an eloquent argument for a radical reorganisation of the urban education system to better use lnstead of bringing the city as a resource. Ward saw pockets of possibility and positive imitation bits of the change in various experimental examples from the UK and internationally city into a school which, he felt, showed the power and potential of teaching children about the processes in society through engaging – hands on – with their cities, building, let's go at as opposed to learning about them ‘in a descriptive, fact accumulating our own pace and get way’. 3 His notion of an ‘environmental education’ emphasised teaching out among the real mastery of the city – and by extension, society. This, as Cathy Burke has observed, was rooted in a view of the child as ‘maker and shaper things of their world.4
Ward admired and saw himself as writing in chorus with his contemporaries Paulo Freire and Ivan Illich, advocates of critical pedagogy and de-schooling. Yet what he proposed was not so much ‘deschooling’ but ‘schools without walls’ – a schooling system which took children out onto the streets and into the existing ‘learning labs’ of the city: ‘art students at the Art Museum, biology students at the zoo; business and vocational courses at on-the-job sites such as journalism at a newspaper, or mechanics at a garage’.5 To illustrate, he quotes extensively from Paul Goodman’s 1942 novel The 3 Ward, C. (1978). The child in the city. London: Grand Piano in which the author sets up a fictional conversation between The Architectural Press p184 a radical Professor of Education, and a de-schooled New York street urchin 4 – Horace. Arguing that children need to be offered experiences that teach Burke, C (2014b). “Fleeting pockets of them both ‘skills and sabotage’, the Professor views it as self-evident to use anarchy”: Streetwork. The exploding school. ‘the Empire City itself as our school’: Paedagogica Historica: International Journal of the History of Education, p2
Instead of bringing imitation bits of the city into a school building, let’s go 5 Ward, C. (1978). The child in the city. London: at our own pace and get out among the real things. What I envisage are The Architectural Press, 177 gangs of half a dozen, starting at nine or ten years old, roving the Empire quoted in Ward, 1978 Introduction: Why mobilise a city for learning? 16
City with a shepherd empowered to protect them, and accumulating experiences tempered to their powers. Questions?
‘Holy cats’ cried Horace, goggle-eyed to think of others carrying on the way he did. ‘Would they ever make trouble and stop the traffic!’
‘So much the worse for the traffic’ said the professor flatly. ‘I’m talking about the primary function of social life, to educate a better generation, and people tell me that tradesmen mustn’t be inconvenienced. I proceed.6
By the time Ward wrote The Child in the City in 1978, he could point to a number of successful experiments at home and abroad, such as the Parkway Education Programme in Philadelphia initiated in 1969 which had implemented something quite similar to that which Goodman’s fictional professor was advocating, and examples from particular schools in London and the other British industrial cities where children’s enquiry projects had interacted with and intervened in their neighbourhoods and communities.
A more recent reference point which informs the 80by18 project is the Area Based Curriculum project initiated by the Royal Society of the Arts, Manufacture and Commerce (RSA), which ran in Manchester and Peterborough from 2008 to 2011. These two cross curricular experiments ran in 3 schools in Manchester and later 5 in Peterborough with the aim of enhancing the educational experience of young people by ‘creating rich 6 connections with the communities, cities, and cultures that surround them Goodman, P. (1942). The grand piano: or, The and distributing education effort across the people, organisations, and almanac of alienation. The Colt Press.176, 7 institutions of a local area’. In developing Manchester and Peterborough 7 curriculums, the ABC project was rooted in a desire to change the RSA 2009, cited in Facer and Thomas 2012 Introduction: Why mobilise a city for learning? 17
relationship between the ‘local’ and the ‘national’ in curriculum design. While the ABC project met with some significant successes in this regard The risk is that – creating curriculum development partnerships, providing access to sites for learning in the locality, instigating sustainable relationships between you turn the city schools and local stake holders, and generating direct and positive contact into a school for students with adults from a range of sectors and backgrounds – a key finding was also that:
The localisation of curriculum [was] translated into a redistributive education project. The city [was] seen as a resource to be harnessed in pursuit of national curriculum goals. The city, in other words, [was] interpreted as a pedagogic rather than a curricular resource, a resource that casts ‘the community’ in the role of supporting act to the school rather than partner, critical friend, or site of challenge.8
Furthermore, this view of the role of the city in turn:
...acts as a selection device that determines which city ‘resources’ are appropriate to be drawn upon. It reciprocally shapes, for example, the perception of which parents or civic society organisations might be qualified to contribute to the work of the school.9
These two reference points – the Child in the City and the Area Based Curriculum projects, highlight an important tension in seeking to make the city available for young people to use and navigate as a resource for their own development, namely, the risk of simply transforming the city into another set of narrowly prescribed appropriate curriculum obligations, things 8 that have to be done, rather than rights to explore. The risk is that you turn Facer and Thomas 2012:8 the city into a school. 9 Facer and Thomas 2012:9 Introduction: Why mobilise a city for learning? 18
Our aim in 80by18 was to err on the side of developing the project as a mechanism to support the child’s ‘right to the city’, a toolbox for ‘skills and sabotage’ rather than a set prescribed curriculum goals. The first consequence of this was that the 80by18 project did not therefore begin with the school and work with teachers to ‘curate’ the city, as previous projects had done. Instead, we took inspiration from projects such as the National Trust’s 50 things to do before 11¾ and set out to explore how you could generate from the city and its inhabitants themselves, an idea of what might act as powerful, exciting, interesting or important experiences that the city could offer its young people. Such a list, we hoped, would act as a provocation and a prompt to schools, to the city and to families to encourage them to ask challenging questions about the range of experiences young people currently had access to. We also, implicitly, hoped that this would stimulate debate about the sorts of fundamental economic, infrastructural and political changes that might also need to happen to enable such access for all young people.
The 80by18 project therefore involved three inter-related lines of inquiry.
1. Understanding the activities in which young people in the city were already participating.
2. Uncovering and making visible the resources, experiences and activities that the city might have to offer its young people.
3. Exploring how ‘making the city visible’ impacted on young people’s ‘right to the city’. Young people, the city, and out-of school learning now 19
Young people, the city, and out-of school learning now
How are young people already navigating and making sense of the resources of the city of Bristol? Answering this question is far from straightforward. Not least because we know that cities are experienced radically differently by different groups of people. ‘The city’ is, in fact, many different cities; it is imagined and lived and experienced as a different place depending on who you are, where you come from, your age, ethnicity, gender, physical strength10. Notwithstanding this caveat, we felt that it was important to attempt to generate some understanding of young people’s existing uses of the city by actually talking with groups of young people about their current activities outside the school.
In 2013, one of us (Paul) carried out a set of research activities with over 150 young people aged 7-17 from diverse backgrounds and communities across Bristol (see Note 1). Approximately 120 of these young people participated in face-to-face workshops that Paul ran in primary schools and in teenagers’ after-school settings. In these settings we worked with them to map where they spent time in the city, what activities they were involved with and also what their aspirations were for their futures. Another 59 participated in a survey developed by the Envision group we were working with. 10 Lefebvre, H. (1974). La Production de l’espace. Paris: Anthropos. While there were significant differences within and between the young people in these workshops, some common patterns and themes 11 There is a wider literature on children’s out of emerged between the different groups. The most notable differences school learning in which this project is unsurprisingly were between different age groups, as children’s situated. An excellent recent summary of the growing independence informed the range and form of their activities debates and evidence is available in Bekerman et al (2006) ‘Learning in Places, New York: 11 beyond school . Peter Lang. Ola Erstad’s ‘Digital Learning Lives’ (New York: Peter Lang) is also a great resource for understanding the way in which the online interacts with offline informal learning. 20
Diagram 1 Young people, the city, and out-of school learning now 21
7-11 year olds
Amongst the Primary age group, the children were involved in a wide range of activities and experiences which they self-categorised in themes such as “arty/creative”, “sports”, “family activities” and “unusual”. Within these were structured activities such as swimming and music lessons and team sports, but also self organised or ad-hoc activities such as singing sleepovers at friends’ houses, or playing in parks or gardens with friends and siblings (see diagram 1). A general picture emerged of busy out-of-school lives for the majority of those in this age group. It was noticeable, however, that there were a small handful of 3-6, mainly boys, in each class who found it difficult to think of any out-of-school activity they had recently participated in, or could only refer to computer gaming.
The children were reflective about the barriers that prevented them from accessing these and other activities that they would like to pursue. The barriers raised repeatedly in the primary age workshops were primarily practical:
●● Transport – Particularly their lack of independence around travel: needing to be dropped off and picked up by parents. Also the expense of public transport and petrol.
●● Expense of activities – entry or participation fees; cost of resources and equipment
●● Busy lives – limited time: already engaged in many out-of-school activities. Not having energy: often tired after school
●● Competing family demands – parental time, siblings and pets needs to be accommodated Young people, the city, and out-of school learning now 22
●● Parental worry – particularly about physical risk
In sum, the work with 7-11 year olds painted an intriguing picture of a group Long-term of generally inquisitive and excited young people with already busy out-of- regulars at the school lives that were in the main centred around home and school youth club and locations, yet keen to try challenging new things and explore their own city. adventure They also showed themselves to be aware of many of the possibilities open playground we to them, as well as the limitations of their own lack of independence and knowledge. Crucially, they expressed strong senses of motivation and visited spoke creativity in their approaches to how to overcome these limitations. passionately about the value of their experiences there 12-15 year olds
The long-term regulars at the youth club and adventure playground we visited spoke passionately about the value of their experiences there, not least because the space was threatened with closure. They particularly emphasised the value of having a physical space beyond both the school and the home to feel comfortable in and call their own – “like a club house”. Important to them was a balance between open time and space to socialise and “let off steam”, and a calendar of events and activities, mediated by youth workers with whom they had long term, trusting relationships. They described activities they had been involved in there over the years: cooking on an open fire, building and repairing wooden play structures, organising Halloween parties, designing and building a skate ramp. They clearly expressed the opinion that these had been experiences that they would not have thought of or had the opportunity to pursue otherwise, and how they had linked on to other off-site experiences such as organised camping trips with other groups and trips to climbing walls. Young people, the city, and out-of school learning now 23
In sum, the responses from this age group revealed tendencies to:
●● Value open-access indoor spaces, which balanced opportunities to socialise with structured and mediated activities
●● Be focused on commercial “entertainment” activities and organised groups or clubs
●● Be limited in their mobility by public transport as well as concerns over ‘street safety’
●● Perceive and feel frustrated by lack of opportunity for their interests or age groups
●● Be relatively less motivated than primary age groups in seeking out or overcoming barriers to accessing new experiences
16-18 year olds
A group of nine 16 and 17 year olds working with the social action charity Envision took part in a workshop reflecting on their own experiences growing up in the city. They then partnered with the project as part of their own research and campaigning around teenagers’ opportunities in Bristol, surveying 59 peers in their secondary schools. 17 of these respondents were in the 16-18 age range.
In sum, the research with 16-18 year olds suggested that they:
●● Mostly participated in organised sports or physical activity Young people, the city, and out-of school learning now 24
●● Saw the most exciting opportunities as being based in the city centre ●● Had the highest degree of independence but felt restricted in their mobility and opportunity by expensive and/or insufficient transport links, and cost of activities
●● Were heavily peer group driven in both taking up new or reigniting old activities
●● Lamented having given up or missed opportunities to get involve in things when they were younger – particularly ‘creative’ activities – and felt it was “too late” to start them
●● Were heavy users of social networking but were unlikely to use these to generate new offline activity unless peer driven.
Summary
What do these insights tell us about young people’s participation in and use of the city of Bristol as a resource? It makes visible the fact that many young people already have busy out-of-school lives, but are hungry for more activities and opportunities and experience some significant barriers in accessing what already exists.
Primary aged children (7-11) had the most active and diverse out-of-school lives, the bulk of which was centred on the immediate geographical area where they lived and went to school. They were open to new experiences and hungry for more, particularly activities which contained an element of challenge, and which they could do with their friends. Not knowing Young people, the city, and out-of school learning now 25
where to do things, money, time, and parental permission or availability were the main barriers they faced. This all suggested a need for a list of experiences that would appeal to children’s sense of curiosity and desire to be challenged, as well as things that could be done with groups of friends (even requiring, for younger ones, adult supervision or mediation). It also suggested the need for a significant proportion of experiences being free and possible to complete in or around the local area, and hence all over the City.
Younger and older teenagers groups – more mobile and independent – reported some key similarities in their existing and desired activities. They valued structured, mediated group activities and open access spaces such youth clubs and lamented the loss and lack of them. They were even more peer group driven than younger children, and in their independent (including with friends) activity around the city were focused on commercial offers and things in the city centre. By far the most significant barrier they reported was poor and expensive transport links, followed by money and lack of structured opportunities. This all suggested a need for a list with low cost or free experiences that weren’t overly focused on the city centre, which encouraged independent mobility including by other means than public transport, and which was geared towards peer groups completing them together. It also flagged up the need to find ways of promoting the list as something to integrate into existing structured and mediated out-of-school activity for teenagers.
From these workshops, it is clear that young people’s participation in the life of the city is heavily mediated by other people: family and friends are crucial in shaping where and for what reasons young people participate in city activities; transport costs and routes constrain children’s mobility; and the scheduling of their free time in semi-formalised activities, in particular sports, Young people, the city, and out-of school learning now 26
provides a rhythm for many lives. The 12-15 age group seems a particularly under-served group, who are also, with their parents, struggling to work out The 12 - 15 age group how children can independently navigate the city. The dropping off of is one that we might participation in activities in this age group, moreover, leads to regret particularly want to amongst older teenagers. This age group, therefore, is one that we might particularly want to consider when imagining how to engender young consider when people’s ‘right to the city’; in particular, their creative and open participation imagining how to in a range of different activities. engender young people's 'right to We might conjecture, moreover, that young people might be understood less the city' as participating ‘in the city’, than becoming part of social practices, social relations and social activities. The city might better therefore be understood not as a place and set of resources, but as a set of human activities. Clearly what we were trying to do with 80by18 then, and this was in fact reinforced after the first year of trial activity, was to widen the range of social practices that were available to young people. What might be thought of as a spatial, infrastructure issue, was actually a question of coming to participate in a set of social activities with others. While we didn’t realise it at the time, this observation has come to be an important insight from the project and we will return to it later. Mobilising the City – the process 27
Mobilising the City – the process
Bristol is, in many ways, a great city for social innovation and experimentation; indeed, it is part of the European Network of Living Labs The aim of 80by18 was and is leading the way in citizen-led influence in city planning. The only UK to make visible these city to have voted in favour of having a city mayor, Bristol has some 440,000 residents, circa 60,000 of whom are school-aged (5-17). It is small enough to many cities, many villages and many be geographically ‘knowable’ yet with a rich cultural life drawing on its diverse and changing communities. It has a particularly strong output in the different experiences cultural, artistic and creative sectors, with its music scene, street art, and of living in Bristol creative digital technology industry being significant reference points in both its international reputation and civic identity. In terms of its modern industry, it is world-leading in aerospace and precision engineering, and boasts two world-class Universities. In recent years it has topped various national polls as the most desirable city to live in the UK, with the highest quality of life.
It is a relatively wealthy city, yet that wealth is unevenly distributed and the city is characterised by extremes of affluence and deprivation.12 The city is also geographically divided along ethnic and social class lines, and where educational opportunity is significantly unequal. Despite a decade of intervention in state funded schools, for example, young people in Bristol South have the second lowest uptake of Higher Education in England and Wales while constituencies in the North and West of the city have amongst the highest.13 The idea of ‘the city’, then, is not just different for different people, but is arguably contested in Bristol – there are radically unequal 12 experiences of living in this place. Raphael Reed, L., Croudace, C., Baxter, A., Last, K., & Harrison, N. (2007). Young The aim of 80by18 was to make visible these many cities, many villages and participation in higher education: A sociocultural study of educational engagement many different experiences of living in Bristol as resources that would be in Bristol South Parliamentary Constituency. accessible to all young people. This meant showcasing not only the familiar 13 landmark experiences in the more affluent sites of the city; but also the Sutherland, R. (2013). Education and social distinctive experiences that the city offered in all of its villages and justice in a digital age. Policy Press. Mobilising the City – the process 28
postcodes. The critical aim of the project was to try to bring together in one place, all these different accounts and ideas of the city. To do this, however, we needed to work out how to bring these different groups and ideas of the city together. Here, our ‘first partners’ were essential.
As a resident of Bristol who had worked both inside and outside the university for over 15 years, one of us (Keri) had existing relationships with individuals and organisations who had a strong commitment to young people, and who themselves had good networks across the whole range of Bristol’s cultural, commercial, sporting and public fields. Accordingly, we convened a ‘First Partners’ group in 2012 (see Diagram 2 overleaf) from our existing networks, inviting them to help us identify and mobilise the city’s resources for young people. This slightly vague invitation was soon questioned and sharpened up by this group, who came to help us develop the idea of the project as a social movement, an intervention in the city. Those who initially sat at the table were crucial – they informed the shape of the initiative, and opened up their own networks to suggest a list of key people working in a wide range of fields to contact and invite to first events. Such a process of identifying a group, however, also has some flaws. It draws in those groups and individuals who are already in the existing social circles of the university team, groups who are, although working in highly diverse areas of the city, almost all white, university educated, able bodied, professionals. Is this a good or sufficient place to start in what effectively became a mapping exercise for the city? This remains a live question for the project.
How do you find out what a city has to offer?
The first task of the First Partners group was to help clarify the broader question of how the project would ‘make visible’ the resources of the city. Mobilising the City – the process 29
Diagram 2 - Timeline Mobilising the City – the process 30
What, precisely, were the sorts of experiences that would qualify for the 80by18 list? How would we explain what we were looking for from the city? How should we get ideas in?
One easy route to take would have been to identify a set of common ‘areas’ that we thought would be important – e.g. ‘arts/culture; sports; business; civic engagement’ etc. What was clear, however, was that this would rapidly turn the list into another curriculum exercise and provide little in the way of insight into the experiences that the organisations and places that Bristol as a city might uniquely offer. It would simply make visible the usual suspects – the sports clubs, the museums – rather than thinking about the city from a new, bottom-up perspective. Some of our early conversations, for example, fantasised about ideas being generated from the local fishing shop – who might offer young people guidance on where and how to fish; or from the local computing community – who might open their doors to help kids to code.
A second easy route would have been for those of us in the group simply to write the list ourselves. Indeed, there was clearly enough expertise to write a plausible and interesting set of activities and experiences that children in the city could be encouraged to participate in. This, however, seemed to go against the aim of the project – namely, to try to mobilise the whole city. It would be unsatisfactory, we felt, simply for a small group in a room to sit and identify what should happen. Instead, we needed to try to get out there and really find out about the unknown assets, resources and experiences that the city might offer.
A third route would have been simply to ask young people what they wanted to do. And indeed, there were some calls for the list to be either significantly or exclusively ‘young person generated’. I.e that it should be compiled of ideas Mobilising the City – the process 31
suggested by young people, and decisions about content led by a ‘representative’ group of under-18s. After all, don’t young people know best what they find engaging, challenging, and inspiring? Don’t they have at least as good an idea as adults about what the best things are in their city, and shouldn’t they have a final say in what will be useful for their futures? While there may be compelling arguments for these positions – and we certainly heard some – it was decided quite early on, not least as a result of the workshops that we were running with young people, that the aim of the project was something different. It’s aim was to make a hidden city more visible to everyone. We came back, several times, to the old adage “you don’t know what you don’t know”. In any case, how could you compile a group of young people to speak representatively on behalf the 60,000 others in the city?
Avoiding the drive for a familiar subject-content organisation of the city, then, we decided to run a public Call for Ideas, to seek suggestions from as far and wide as possible. We also decided to frame the call for ideas around three distinctive elements that we felt captured the ‘80by18 essence’. First, we decided that, given that the aim of the project was to surface the resources of the city, we would explicitly ask for suggestions of experiences that would make use of city assets. We were not just looking for a list of ‘things to do before you are 18’ (indeed, asking that question tended to generate comic, illicit and raucous suggestions). The second distinctive element in the call for ideas, was that any experience on the list would have to pass the test of being capable of generating curiosity, interest and appeal amongst a significant group of young people – in other words, it wouldn’t just be a worthy list of ‘things you should do because they are good for you’ (another curriculum project).
And finally, thethird distinctive element was that the experience would have to be in some ways, future facing – in other words, to offer an experience Mobilising the City – the process 32
that could be justified on the grounds of being in some ways valuable, meaningful, useful for young people. This latter element would distinguish Ideas for the Bristol the list simply from being a set of fun ‘tourist’ activities in the city. list were generated by face-to-face events, by Of course, treading the line between identifying valuable experiences and turning the whole thing into a curriculum design exercise an online call for for the city was a difficult one. This was precisely why the requirement that ideas, through local young people might find the experiences curious, intriguing or just fun, was media and by street a critical component of the process, and led to us testing all ideas with canvassing young people throughout the process.
These decisions filter and frame what the project is making visible in the city. They are normative (future facing), rights respecting (of interest to young people) and place specific (using Bristol resources). Essentially, what these three criteria for experiences on the list implied, was that this was a resource that was actively curated. It was a set of experiences that the city thought would and should matter to young people. Such a premise, we felt, might enable us to better use the list to defend young people’s rights to the city and to these activities in future.
Getting in the ideas
Ideas for the Bristol list were generated by face-to-face events, by an online call for ideas, through local media (radio and press) appeals and by street canvassing in areas of the city from which we had received relatively few suggestions. Throughout the process, we were mindful of the absences in the workshops and the online call for ideas. Later we tried to target existing networks and mailing lists, as well as creating our own, and sending out various emails explaining the project and inviting participation. What became Mobilising the City – the process 33
very clear early on, however, was that it was through personal relations and personal encouragement, that people would become involved in the network. Cold calling or email invitations, generated very limited response.
The initial events and call for ideas generated a lot a discussion and ‘noise’ about the project, both on and offline: within a few weeks, we were surprised how many people we encountered seemed to already know something of 80by18. Yet the actual suggestions for experiences – through the website, social media, and freepost postcards distributed through the organisational network – were coming in at more of a trickle than a flood. We could also see that what was coming in – though good – was coming mainly from people and organisations already involved in the conversation. And, having gathered many of these – hugely passionate and supportive – people in a room together (twice), we could also see that they were disproportionately white, middle class, professionals in their 30s – early 60s. 80by18 website - call for ideas We really needed to widen the range of ideas coming in, and decided the best way to do this was face-to-face. After all, when you really put people on the spot, explain what you’re looking for and why, and help them articulate what they might know that’s under-represented – people rarely struggle to come up with something. We both did this ourselves, and encouraged others working in face-to-face education or community roles to do so. Paul and research intern Matthew Moutos took to the streets in various under- represented (organisationally) neighbourhoods of the city. On busy high streets, in markets, and by wandering into spaces such as shops, public libraries and community centres – having short ad hoc conversations with whom-ever we encountered. Around 100 ideas were collected from the streets in these ways. Several other people – including teachers, school governors, youth workers, heritage groups and community activists – did the same, sending us their compiled ideas in some cases, or taking Mobilising the City – the process 34
postcards and asking people spoken to to send them in themselves. As an estimate, up to half of the just over 600 viable suggestions that we eventually received are likely to have been produced out of face-to-face conversation. This was vital in increasing both the volume and the diversity of ideas we received.
In the call for ideas, we asked not only for a suggested experience, but also for the resources that would need to be mobilised to make that thing accessible to young people city-wide. Specifically, we asked ‘who/ what might help make that idea happen?’ Of the 617 workable ideas collected, then long-listed down to around 120, a significant proportion were from individuals in organisations suggesting something they knew and were passionate about – in many cases something directly related or close to their own work. This was something we had anticipated and hoped for, since it generated not only a list of ideas to work with, but also the beginnings of real offers from the city about how different organisations might actually help young people to participate in these activities.
What we had really hoped to do, however, was to use 80by18 as a stimulus to encourage city organisations to offer some additional resources and experiences to young people in the city. We had fantasised, for example, about the international film company offering an animation workshop; about the big commercial companies showing groups around their engineering facilities; about the local science park providing some mentoring to kids who wanted to build robots. Three great local organisations stepped up with offers:
●● The BBC offered 50 places on a young filmmaker’s master-class, for the first 50 young people who made and uploaded to YouTube a film about their 80by18 experiences Mobilising the City – the process 35
●● Oxfam committed to work around developing campaigning skills with any young people who started their own campaign that resonated with global poverty issues in some way and gained an initial 200 indications of Over 600 ideas for support (eg signatures or Facebook ‘likes’) activities and experiences in Bristol ●● The Bristol Bike Project agreed to open their weekly drop-in bike repair sessions to all Bristol young people who arrived and mentioned the were submitted 80by18 list.
These kinds of offers were not insignificant for organisations, and a good deal of discussion and thinking through the issues was required – particularly in terms of concerns around demand. The Bike Project wondered whether they would be swamped by 20,000 young people turning up every Friday wanting to fix their bikes. Unlikely, perhaps, but a real issue that needed to be considered sensitively as 80by18 set about trying to visualise and mobilise other organisations’ resource. Understanding the constraints and anxieties of organisations who would like to offer support to young people is an important lesson from the process.
Curating the ideas
Over the period of the open call, over 600 ideas for activities and experiences in Bristol were submitted. These ranged from the popular and simple ‘slide down the slidey rock’ (a notorious slippery piece of rock next to the Gorge, which happens also to be a site of national scientific and historic interest as well as being a good test of nerve); to the obscure (visit Purdown Percy – who was he/it and what was he famous for?); to the entertaining (join in the Easton Pancake race); to the civic (talk to the Mayor); to radical (go to the alternative/underground film festival). The process had generated, Mobilising the City – the process 36
also, a whole new insight into the resources of the city that could be accessed by young people – who knew that there was a ‘blue map’ of the city, mapping all the waterways (including those that were hidden)? Or that there were nationally important species of invertebrates living on that bit of hill in East Bristol? Or that there were places in the woods where not only was it allowed but positively encouraged to build dens and shelters?
Which ideas to choose? We had been discussing this with workshop and event participants throughout the process. In the end, we curated the list in four phases. First, we listened to the insights of our young people’s groups and determined, as far as possible, that the experiences on offer would be no or low cost and that they would be spread across the city. We also listened to participants in the workshops who argued that the experiences should also have an intangible quality described as ‘fairy dust’; in other words, that ideas needed to be a little out of the ordinary, have something special about them. Second, a group of first partners and those who had attended several of the workshops came together to help us condense as many of the ideas as possible into catchy ‘one-liners’. We realised that it would be possible to incorporate a lot of the suggestions from the public into single ideas – for example, the experience ‘see the city from above’ would allow us to include all the suggestions we had had for visiting high buildings. Third, we involved young people in making judgements about which ideas seemed exciting and interesting. This we did through a workshop with around 50 young people from five secondary schools. During this workshop (see Note 3), the young people talked to each other and to us about what sorts of activities they were interested in doing, and which ones simply weren’t desirable. What was noticeable, however, was that there were very few ideas, unsurprisingly, that appealed to everyone – similarly, there were very few that appealed to no one. The self-evident fact Mobilising the City – the process 37
that young people are not all interested in or alienated by the same things, was made very clear in this workshop.
The final phase of curation was the process of identifying commonalities and coherence between clusters of these activities. A simple list of ’80 things to do’, after all, can become a little overwhelming. Analysing the final list, it was clear that there were important themes emerging in the sorts of experiences that were being proposed. These were organised into 8 top- level categories as follows:
●● City-play – using the city as a playground ●● Do it ourselves – activities in the city that involve making, creating, repairing
●● Slow down – taking time out to reflect on and notice the natural and built urban environment
●● Back to the future – accessing the historic and civic resources of the city as a way of understanding how change happens and how the city can be imagined differently
●● World changing – showcasing the many different ways in which young people can get involved in effecting positive social change in their local areas and in the city as a whole.
●● Take a risk – the sorts of challenges available in the city to support young people (and parents) to step out of their comfort zones physically, socially, or culturally Mobilising the City – the process 38
●● Survive and thrive – city resources and activities that encourage the development of survival skills, environmental awareness, skills for sustainability or for future science and technology
●● Random – activities, resources and experiences in the city that are “distinctively Bristol”…
Arguably, these categories reflect something of the underpinning assumptions both of the project team and of those suggesting ideas, about the role that a city might play in supporting young people’s development. While we cannot place too strong an interpretation on this, it is worth noticing that some of these clusters of ideas emerged from and reflected important debates about the nature of contemporary childhood. From the earliest workshops there was significant concern, for example, that children were being denied the opportunity to take risks, to be autonomous and independent, to challenge themselves physically and emotionally. Adults in the room discussed their sadness at the lack of opportunities for children to be independent explorers of their city and their natural world. A whole set of activities therefore emerged that really attempted to identify practical steps that parents might allow and children might enjoy taking to develop this independence: travelling through the city along the length of the 75 bus route; cooking on an open fire.
A commitment to respect children’s rights to play, to have freedom and to explore also emerged in the cluster of ideas that fall under the ‘city as playground’; a theme that has since emerged in a suite of projects in the city that aim to create new and safe public spaces for younger children’s play. The ‘slow down’ category might have been reflective as much of adult anxiety and stress as an aspiration for children, but again and again, ideas were submitted that suggested a desire to encourage children to take time Mobilising the City – the process 39
to inhabit the world differently, to pay close attention to the natural world, to spend time noticing the smaller, calmer, quieter moments of life – from The list is a riotous, walking through the city at dawn, to seeing the bluebells in the woods. unpredictable, celebration of the Taken together, the 8 categories capture something of the city’s sense of what it will take children to survive and thrive in future – from experimenting variety of experiences with social innovation and setting up your own business, to encountering that are potentially people from different faiths, to tasting food that’s never been tasted before, to open to young people joining in the annual Zombie Walk. The list is a riotous, unpredictable, in the city celebration of the variety of experiences that are potentially open to young people in the city.
Practicalities
One of the difficulties of curating a list such as 80by18, which aims to show the city to its young people, is the miasma of legal responsibility and anxiety that has come to surround any initiative relating to young people. This manifested itself first, in relation to the design of the online resource itself and second, in relation to the content.
It became clear very early on that we would not have the financial resources to enable the creation of a fully interactive, social media site in which organisations could easily upload and update their offers, and where young people might be uploading information about what they were doing or talking with each other. Young people also said they didn’t want something they had to register for or log in to, as there were too many sites that required this and it was off-putting. Equally, however, the costs of monitoring a social environment in which children could interact with each other, given the concerns around children’s online participation, meant that we had to stick to a very simple broadcast web model. Mobilising the City – the process 40
In other words, this concern about child safety meant that we would present a simple list online, but not facilitate online interactions around this. This remains a source of some regret and we continue to explore how best to integrate the site with social media activity to generate more of a public debate and feedback on activities.
In respect of the content of the site, our initial strategy was to resist using worries about child safety to pre-filter ideas. It was only once the final list was selected that we examined how to address these concerns. Our aim was always to find ways to encourage young people to participate while being aware and mindful of potential risks involved. In practice, the children themselves were more than able to monitor the risks – suggestions of ‘wild swimming in the docks’, for example, led to them voicing a whole raft of concerns about swimming outdoors.
We discussed two key issues in relation to the final list 1. Were there any risks to children participating in these activities? 2. What were we actually saying about the activities and experiences on the list? For the first concern, we simply provided as much ‘health and safety’ advice as we could and encouraged children to talk with each other and with their parents before doing anything. We also explicitly, and after much debate, included a set of activities that we identified as ‘good for little’uns’ so that parents would have a guide to the relative age appropriateness of different activities. Our concern here was that we did not want to put off older children from doing these.
In respect of the second concern, it was clear that we could not carry out detailed assessments of all activities and all participating organisations. We needed, therefore, to explain clearly what it meant if an organisation was ‘on the list’. In the end, our imperfect solution was to make clear that Mobilising the City – the process 41
organisations who are ‘on the list’ (and/or are promoting themselves as such) have agreed that they’re happy to be listed, but that they have not been ‘vetted’ by 80by18 or the University, and that the experiences haven’t been risk assessed as suitable for young people.
Politics
In the weeks and months following the first event at the Watershed, the project had an increasing public profile in the city. Attendees of that first event had helpfully done exactly what we’d asked of them and people were talking about it, tweeting about it and it really seemed to be growing legs. Yet in the process of conducting background research with young people, organising further events liaising with various organisations, institutions, and individuals to hear their ideas and get them on board, something unforeseen emerged. The project was being understood by some – mainly those who had not attended any workshops – as a new initiative competitively entering a space in the city (‘informal learning’) characterised by significant flux and increasingly scarce resources. One aspect of the context that the project was operating in was that the City Council (along with many local authorities in England and Wales) was both cutting its youth services budget, and commissioning-out future delivery in a competitive tender process. At the same time, many of the arts and civil society organisations in the region were involved in ongoing competitive and collaborative relationships to try to secure funding, opportunity and recognition of their particular area of work, passions, or agendas. Familiar resources – adventure playgrounds for example – were being closed down and community groups needed to battle to save them.
In this context, it was understandable that some of the youth workers and organisations that we spoke to were cautious about the politics Mobilising the City – the process 42
of the 80by18 project, and of the University’s role. Was this really a neutral and well-intentioned activity, or was it providing cover for austerity Is stepping up to measures? Were we in it to make a profit or to develop a new service that identify resources in would compete with existing providers? Was the council behind this in the community an act some way – as a cost saving exercise? After all, if you produce an online list of powerful out-of-school learning opportunities for young people to of betrayal to those who pursue on their own, this might be seen as undermining the need for would seek to protect youth and play workers and others who do vital and undervalued face-to- state investment in face work. public services?
This caused us to pause and reflect. To what extent was what we were attempting to do complicit with a withdrawal of funding for youth services? To what extent would encouraging others to make visible their resources in the city work against those existing providers? In many ways, this is a dilemma that is playing out across countries in which austerity economics are being implemented. Is stepping up to identify resources in the community an act of betrayal to those who would seek to protect state investment in public services? After significant soul searching we felt that we could not accept the binary opposition that underpinned much of this debate – namely, that any civil society-led action should be interpreted as oppositional to state funding. Rather, we believed that state provision would never, in and of itself, be sufficient to create public wellbeing. Indeed, we felt that at times, and used bluntly, it can erode and undermine the capacity of citizens and civil society to participate and shape society. In this, we draw on the principles of asset based community development, which recognises the significant and important role of anchor institutions as platforms to support, work alongside and amplify the assets and resources of communities. 14 We draw also on the ideas of co-production of services derived from the Co-production: A manifesto for growing the core economy; The New Economics work of Elinor Ostrum, and more recently promoted in particular by the New Foundation/NESTA (2009) The Challenge of Economics Foundation14 in the UK. In other words, we were very clear and Co-production Mobilising the City – the process 43
careful to ensure that what we were doing was not competing with existing youth services provision, but intended to be supportive of it.
What was more difficult to make sense of was the occasional sense of ‘competition’ from other organisations in the city concerned with youth provision. Here there was a sense that we might be seeking to enter the ‘market’ as a competitor. Again, we had to step back and reflect on our role. In the end, we concluded that our aspiration was to step into a temporary gap – one that was about operating at a city scale to make visible the resources of the city, rather than attempting to develop a competing service or system. And if, over time, this activity came to be seen as the 80by18 website remit of another organisation then we would happily and enthusiastically, make the 80by18 resource available to anyone who wanted to take it on for public benefit.
In the end, there was little more that we could do than to try to work carefully and supportively on the ground; to work in collaboration and solidarity with those seeking to make the most of the city for its young people; and to ensure that our focus was not on replicating or competing with existing resources, but building on and making visible what already exists – creating more opportunity and access where possible.
The 80by18 website
So what, in the end, is the 80by18 resource?
First and foremost it is a searchable list of 80 experiences in the city. Users (children and parents) can search for activities through free text, or through the filters that are in place (looking for things that require no Mobilising the City – the process 44
or a lot of planning, can be done everywhere or require travel, are suitable for outdoors or indoors activity). Users can also look for all activities in a particular category and work their way through them. There are the usual checklists, to print off and work through. There are maps showing a set of activities in different local areas of the city. There are some reports and observations on ‘doing the activities’ from young people in South Bristol.
More importantly, however, each experience is not just a catchy one-line activity. For every experience, we provide guidance and resources on what to go and where to do. We want to help children who might otherwise have little support, work out how they might get started. We tell them who to contact, the equipment they’ll need, the places they can do things, the way to get there. Depending on the experience, each page also contains one or both sections ‘safety tips’ – any precautions to take or hazards to be aware of – and ‘taking it further’, which suggests how users might get more deeply involved in this experience should they choose to. There are hundreds of organisations and resources now online to help the child navigate their way through the city to these experiences.
What is still missing from the list, however, is more than the limited number of ‘offers’ we gained from BBC, Oxfam and the bike project. In the end, the project was under-resourced for the task of really identifying the potential contributions that city organisations might make who are not currently already opening their doors to young people. We do believe, however, that the principle of a simple gatekeeping device – for example, the first 50 young people to upload a film to youtube etc – has the potential to act as a manageable structure for future negotiations over city-contributions. This remains to be developed. Mobilising the City – the process 45
80by18, however, was never intended just to be a website. It was intended to be a call to action for cultural providers, businesses large and small, community groups and others to showcase how they might be able to support young people in the city. It was intended to act as a clarion call to encourage the city to make it easier for young people to access these activities – whether through improving its transport options for under 18s or by investing properly in youth services provision. Finally, it was intended as a platform around which many city organisations could come together to explore how to better equip young people for contemporary life. These aspirations are all still to be realised and the groups and individuals involved in the project are working on this. For now, however, we want to turn to some of the lessons learned in the pilot phase from young people ‘trying out the list’. Insights from the 80by18 pilot 2014 46
Insights from the 80by18 pilot 2014
The pilot of 80by18 took four forms between January and July 2014, with different degrees of management by the project team: 1. The site was made publicly available and promoted through the local media, we kept an eye on web stats and were responsive to requests to communicate with us about it; 2. First partners agreed to use the resource in their work with schools and to feedback on that process; 3. We developed a young people’s research group to look carefully at how young people might go about trying to complete the 80 activities; and 4. South Bristol Youth Consortium took the resource and used it explicitly as part of its widening participation and youth board activities.
Well over 100 people attended the pilot launch in November 2013 and we sent out emails and tweeted extensively promoting it. In the weeks and months that followed, we promoted the project to schools, youth centres, and any organisation working with young people. Crucially, others also played a significant role in spreading the word. The twitter account developed into a hub for people and organisations sharing information about one off events or ongoing activities which could support one or more of the experiences in some way, or simply commenting positively on the list and website as a resource. By Christmas, four weeks after launch, the website had attracted 1,927 sessions from 1,392 unique users. At the time of writing this report in August 2014 the total figures were 5,262 sessions from 3,629 unique users, averaging in the region of 400-500 sessions a month with notable ‘spikes’ in usage around school holiday periods.
Working with young researchers on the 80by18 pilot
Between November 2013 and July 2014, Paul led a set of research activities with young people designed to explore the following research questions: Insights from the 80by18 pilot 2014 47
●● Does following the list change the way young people physically inhabit the city and its sites for learning? For instance, do they visit new places or increase the diversity of sites they visit? Do they use their local area for new purposes? Does it change how and when they move around, using which forms of transport?
●● Do the 80 experiences on the list change young people’s conceptions of Bristol and its social, cultural, and geographical landscapes? For instance, does it alter their ideas of what is possible and accessible to them and their peers in the city? Does it change the associations they make between particular areas or sites and the activities that are available to them there? Does it foster a sense of having ‘rights’ to use or access certain spaces and resources.
●● In what ways do the experiences foster new or different forms of learning and pedagogy? Do they reignite old or unfashionable ones? What are teachers, educators, and young people’s perspectives on these different forms of learning? Do they complement or perhaps challenge school curricula, and in what ways?
●● Does the project as a whole change the relationships that young people (independently or through their families, clubs, communities, schools) have with the ‘experience providers’? i.e the organisations ‘on the list’ who offer, promote, resource, or safeguard the 80 experiences in some way. What is the nature of these new relationships? What kinds of dialogues, offers or opportunities are opened up?
To answer these questions, and given Bristol’s specific and widely acknowledged socio-economic and geographical divides, we worked with Insights from the 80by18 pilot 2014 48
schools and young people in South Bristol. To begin, we approached and/or ran initial ‘taster’ workshops in six secondary schools in South Bristol, some directly and others through the charity South Bristol Youth Consortium who had come on board as partners. Paul then began to work directly in one school, Merchants Academy, where a group of 5 students met an average of once a fortnight to first learn research skills then design ‘mini research projects’ around the experiences. Paul also partnered with Camilla Chandler of South Bristol Youth Consortium to facilitate workshops aimed at setting up a dispersed network of young people in 3 other schools who wanted to test out experiences as a challenge and research exercise, and reflect their experiences and findings back. Some of these young people undertook experiences on their own, and communicated their findings directly via email and interviews conducted on research school visits or in some cases at the University in the school holidays. Others undertook experiences as part of structured out-of-school activity with South Bristol Youth Consortium. These students insights were fed by at presentations by Camilla Chandler and 7 young researchers at the University of Bristol in July 2014.
The following five sections describe the processes, outcomes, and reflections from young researchers pursuing the experiences15. The first three are from individual experiences the Merchants Academy group set up and completed together as peer-research projects; the fourth summarises the findings of two young men from Brislington Enterprise College who took on researching the list as a challenge and completed 28 experiences between them; the final summarises the reflections of Camilla Chandler and Nik Garrick and their experiences of promoting and using the list in the city. 15 The young researchers in the project have indicated their desire to be credited for their work on the project, which is why usual rules of anonymity have been waived. Insights from the 80by18 pilot 2014 49
What does 80by18 ‘do’ for young people?
The young researchers in the Merchants Academy group worked with Paul to explore what it would take to enable young people to complete some of the activities on the list. In particular, they decided together to research the following activities on the list (included below with their online rationale):
1. Create the next Wallace and Gromit: Why do it? With Aardman animations in the city, Bristol leads the field for creative animation. There are people in the city who are world leaders and there are creative jobs in this area.
2. Go Underground, Get to the Deepest Spot Beneath Bristol: Why do it? It’ll be spooky and strange and a good way to find out how the city works underground.
3. Visit a (different) place of worship: Why do it? Whether you are deeply religious or an atheist (a person with no religious beliefs), the reality is that you’re going to need to figure out how to live, work and make friends with other people.
As a group, the young researchers and Paul used the website to identify some of the resources that it might take to actually achieve these three goals. They documented the process and presented it back in July 2014.
It is worth noting, before we report on this, that as coordinator of this group, Paul worked closely with the young people and put in place a set of resources that, it soon became clear, would be necessary for the young people to achieve some of these activities. For example, he became the chauffeur, getting them across the city to various visits; and the relationship broker, Insights from the 80by18 pilot 2014 50
making calls with organisations to get access. More importantly, perhaps, he clearly played a role in encouraging and motivating them to do things that they might have been less confident to do without active encouragement.
The fact that such support was needed makes clear the extent to which making visible the city’s resources, and showcasing them to young people needs to be matched also by the time and resources to support and enable young people’s participation. This is an issue we will return to in the conclusion and next steps.
Case Study 1 – Create the Next Wallace and Gromit
This 80by18 Activity sets the challenge to young people in Bristol to ‘create the next Wallace and Gromit’ by encouraging them to take their first steps in stop-frame animation using “objects, plasticine, photos or drawings” to create characters and “tell stories about your neighbourhood”. It frames this activity in relation to Aardman animations’ popular film characters and suggests that the company’s presence in the city makes Bristol a leading field of creative animation. The webpage provides a set of links to online instructions for getting started and to organisations in the city (including Aardman) who might provide further inspiration or in some cases run workshops.
A group of five young researchers selected this experience to base a mini research project around. While the experience was designed to promote the acquisition of animation skills independently, using the Aardman character’s names (with the company’s blessing) as a way of hooking in young people’s attention, the group took the title of the experience quite literally, as a challenge. They set themselves the research question “what would it take Insights from the 80by18 pilot 2014 51
for a young person to create a new animation character and get it into a film?” Although Wallace and Gromit and other Aardman outputs were very familiar cultural reference points, initially none of the group could name the company or knew where it was based – only that these popular films and iconic characters had “something to do with Bristol”, as evidenced by the previous summer’s Gromit Unleashed initiative.16 After some initial background conversations and web research, they decided to use the existing links and resources on the 80by18 experience page and attempt to secure an interview with someone at Aardman to find out more.
Why was this activity of interest to them? The group’s motivations for focusing in on this experience were that learning to animate was intriguing in itself, and the potential for either themselves or other young Bristolians to produce a new creative ‘product’ that might link to this established, high status company was a particularly exciting prospect that might “take off”. The imagined accolades and possible financial rewards for a young person who successfully did this were repeatedly mentioned in the set-up process. They also felt that it would be a great experience to help primary school children to do as – the group felt – younger age groups had a more natural creativity and interest in model making and animation.
How did they make this happen? Both Aardman Animations and Puppet Place were happy to arrange a meeting with the young researchers when 16 Gromit Unleashed was a public art exhibition approached by Paul. led by Wallace & Gromit’s Grand Appeal and Aardman Animations, in which 80 giant What did they do? Paul and the young researchers arrived at Puppet Place artist-decorated fibreglass sculptures of Gromit were displayed on the streets of Bristol in the school minibus with a sense of excitement and expectation. Interview and the surrounding area in Summer 2013. At questions had been planned the previous week, and the group were feeling the end of the art trail, the sculptures were auctioned to raise funds for Wallace & Gromit’s confident about asking them. Shown in through a hidden door, we were Grand Appeal, the Bristol Children’s Hospital greeted by puppets hanging from walls and ceilings and a busy workshop Charity Insights from the 80by18 pilot 2014 52
space full of artists hard at work: each preparing for installations or performance pieces. Reflecting back, Amy and Jake noted that both the building and the people had confounded their expectations:
P: What were you first impressions?
A: I loved the fact that the door was in a brick wall! It was like going into another world – a world of puppets!
P: Was it what you were expecting?
A: No it wasn’t. I knew it was going to be sort of... childish in a way... everything would be cartoonish and funny. But the first thing I saw when I walked in was a puppet above my head and I just thought “woah, I love this place already!”
J: It was incredible that that small workshop could fit so many puppets and people in there. They seemed so devoted to what they do, their... art form... [The artists] seemed quite nice – but they were obviously very busy.
P: Were they the sort of people you expected?
J: No. I thought they’d be more...like when you meet an artist and he seems all...grouchy and stuff. [laughs]
P: Why do you think artists are grouchy?
J: Cos you know like they’re so involved in their projects and they have too little sleep and all that Insights from the 80by18 pilot 2014 53
A: Before we walked in I wasn’t thinking that they’d be very young – I thought it’d be all old people making the puppets n’that. Like, old style puppets and that.
Moving to the upstairs space, a large meeting room-cum-kitchen with an elderly dog in it where we conducted a 45 minute conversation with our hosts – Puppet Place’s two employees – the young people became quite animated. During that informal interview they exchanged cultural references about puppetry in old films such as Jason and the Argonauts, Star Wars and The Dark Crystal which – they spontaneously remembered – had formed important parts of their childhoods. The young people were delighted to learn that these films and the puppet makers who had worked on them formed part of the Puppet Place’s influences, professional and social networks and they excitedly received titbits of insider industry knowledge and gossip about these figures and texts. The sights and smells of the room itself – a cosy, lived in environment adorned with old puppets and books on puppetry – loomed large in their reflections on the experience and how it had dredged up these memories and associations:
A: It had an odd smell! It reminded me of my nan’s house – it brought back a lot of memories because her house really smelt really like... organic. I think it was the smells from the kitchen. It reminded me of like gingerbread. And really old books.
J: It was like being invited into someone’s home. You could tell they spend a lot of time up there all together.
A: Yeah me and my mum always used to sit down and watch those old films when I was younger, they’re just the best...but they’re all just Insights from the 80by18 pilot 2014 54
puppets. And recently I saw something on telly about how they made the puppets in Labyrinth, it was just amazing!
The visit turned out to be a fruitful exercise for Puppet Place, too, who were very pleased to have an audience with a group of teenagers and used the opportunity to discuss with them their early stage thinking about workshops and activities to engage children in puppetry.
Thus, by the time we visited Aardman some weeks later the young researchers’ thinking around the project had developed somewhat further towards ‘finding out how animation and puppetry organisations in Bristol can support young people in learning to animate’.
Our visit to Aardman Animations HQ was hosted by the Creative Director of Wallace and Gromit, and again marked by a sense of high excitement and privilege at gaining access to an impressive harbour-side building not open to the public. Touring the open-plan offices and viewing the cabinet displays including Oscars and original models of familiar characters such as Morph was a giggly, awe inspiring experience that also led to an immediately clearer understanding of Aardman as a commercial company and its global significance – “I was surprised by how many adverts they did” – that they had not previously grasped.
In a recorded interview with the Creative Director, Merlin – who was warm and open – the group focused their questions on the creative and technical process, and how Merlin himself had got started (bitten by the animation bug while an A-level student at a local college). The researchers were keen to find out – and Merlin happy to share – information about animation as a career path, including the salary of a junior animator at Aardman (which sounded to them enticingly high, around £600/week). Insights from the 80by18 pilot 2014 55
Having heard a detailed account of the character generation, story scripting, and production processes – the group moved on to ask in what ways Aardman had encouraged young animators in the past and how they might in the future:
C: Do you ever do any like competitions or anything? Like where kids can submit their own stop motions or animations and you end up giving them a chance to like make a movie or anything like that?
M: I’m not sure we’ve ever actually done one. We’ve certainly been involved in them - I’ve been a judge on one that was run by Red Bull. But that’s not to say we wouldn’t in the future. I think the only thing stopping us is having a reason why we would do that.
D: Do you have anything like open days?
M: Ah, unfortunately we don’t. Because our studio is, quite a dangerous place! And on a very boring front, we can’t get insurance to cover ourselves... So many people say “oh we’d love to come and look round your studio” that we’re constantly trying to find a way of having some kind of permanent exhibition or space that feels like a studio that isn’t a studio. The exhibition we’re currently doing at Mshed won’t be that, but hopefully it will be a chance for the people of Bristol to see a little bit of that.
Asking directly whether Aardman would “ever allow children to take part in Wallace and Gromit”, Merlin honestly replied that “the short answer is ‘no’” due to pressures of budget and time, but referred to a previous project with the Tate Gallery in London in which Aardman had worked with young people to produce a 30 minute film. Insights from the 80by18 pilot 2014 56
Reflecting back on this part of the conversation in the minibus on the way home, the group felt somewhat disappointed – “it’s sad they don’t allow open days: it’s such a child-like, imaginative place” – but rationalised Merlin’s responses in relation to what they had learnt about Aardman as a commercial operation. They felt and hoped, however, there was scope for Aardman to do things on a small scale such as running workshops in primary schools – “just give them a ball of playdough” – and perhaps encouraging or training teachers and other adults. They emphasised that there could be a lot of value for young people in Bristol learning modelling and animation skills in a context associated even loosely with the Aardman brand name, especially if it involved learning something about the company and their creative process since “they’ve inspired millions across the world. And I bet half of them don’t even know that it was Aardman what made it”. Probing the young people about whether the 80by18 project would be a good vehicle to encourage Aardman to get further involved in this way, they were unsure. On the one hand, Merlin seemed pleased to be referenced on the list and encouraged that this might inspire young people to animate. On the other, it was unclear what benefits it would bring to Aardman to open themselves up to young people in the city, and unclear how the mechanics of opening a company working to strict commercial deadlines, might work.
The inspiration of the visit was helpful, however; using some of the iPad apps and online resources Merlin had suggested, the group spent an hour after school producing short animations with objects (rather than modelled characters) and were very pleased with the results. Some in the group were then inspired to continue in their own time, at home. Insights from the 80by18 pilot 2014 57
Case Study 2 – Go Underground
The experience Go Underground invites participants to explore “the hidden tunnels, caves, and buildings that have either been built on or forgotten about”. The webpage proposes that this will be “spooky and strange...a good way to find out how the city works underground”. In terms of volume of content, this is one of the least developed pages. It notes that many sites are not open to the public and the best time to gain access is on Bristol Open Doors day, which takes place once a year, and a web link is provided. It is not, therefore, the easiest activity that the young researchers could have chosen to research and develop. All the more interesting to see how they worked it out.
Why do it? The young researchers chose this experience as it appealed to their sense of adventure and exploration. They interpreted their mini- research project as finding out how easy it was to access the underground sites listed, and whether these were experiences that would appeal to other young people. Their interest had been piqued at the 80by18 launch event where Councillor Brenda Massey had spoken both publically and informally to them of some underground caves in her ward (Southmead), which she might be able to help broker access to. As a research exercise they were interested in trying to gain access to one or more underground sites outside of Open Doors day (which didn’t fall within our project timing), and also surveying other young people in their school to see if they had ever heard of or visited them, and encouraging them to do so.
How did they make it happen? This progressed by the group emailing Councillor Massey for more information about “her” Southmead caves – which turned out to be too far away to arrange a visit after school. Through independent web research Chloe, one of the young researchers, identified a Insights from the 80by18 pilot 2014 58
number of other possible sites, and we also emailed the Architecture Centre (who co-ordinate Open Doors) who came back with a number of other possibilities. One of these was Clifton Rocks Railway, a disused underground funicular dating back to the late 1800s, running up the Avon Gorge between Hotwells and Clifton. From further web research, we established that the site was preserved and maintained by a local heritage organisation, Clifton Rocks Railway Trust, and that – in addition to annual open days – group tours could take place by arrangement. The group were keen on this site – which none of us had ever heard of, despite all being familiar with the location – both for its quirky history and intriguing photos on the website (“it looks like an interesting place to have a nose around”) and because it was within reach for an after-school visit in the minibus within session timings. After an email exchange with members of the Trust’s committee (which Paul conducted, explaining the project and requesting a visit) we were invited for a tour.
What did they do? Meeting us at the top station, our tour guide for the afternoon – a volunteer who had been closely involved in the current restoration project since 2005 – began with a detailed account of the railway’s history as well as the process of gaining funding and restoring it as a heritage site. Opened in 1893 after a decade of planning and construction running significantly over-budget, this private transport initiative carried hundreds of thousands of passengers but was a spectacular failure in commercial terms, losing money until it was eventually closed in 1934. During WW2 it was used for civilian air raid shelter and as a secure (“open secret”) emergency site for the BBC to continue their war time radio broadcasting. In 2005 access was granted to the public for the first time since the war after a clean-up operation by volunteers, before the group registered as a Charitable Trust in 2008 and continued restoration, promotion and guardianship. Insights from the 80by18 pilot 2014 59
Initially restless at the description-heavy start of the 90 minute tour – as one reflected later, “a lot of that historical stuff at the beginning was a bit boring for me to be honest” – the group became far more engaged and chatty once they had donned hard hats and high-viz jackets and descended into the tunnel. They were particularly taken with the WW2 history, recovered artefacts and period graffiti, including child-like renditions of early Disney characters on walls.
Reflections post-visit – in the mini bus home and the following week – centred on the value of the railway as a historical site, its potential interest to other young people, the experience of the tour itself, and the nature of the Trust and the role of its volunteers in preserving it. An exploratory conversation on this latter point revealed both new knowledge and an understanding-in-formation about the relationship of people and organisations to spaces and places in the city, access, and possibilities:
P: So that organisation, the Trust, it was really nice of them to invite us down. Why do you think they’ve ended up the guardians of it?
D: She’s a volunteer for the social community - I read it on the board
P: The social community, what does that mean?
D: The social community, like in Clifton. I don’t know what they are exactly - kind of a little bit like the neighbourhood watch, but like...for places? Maybe like a local history society. I read the article on the display. It was kind of like a social development group.
J: And there was a photo of her outside Buckingham Palace Insights from the 80by18 pilot 2014 60
D: I think she must have retired...so she must do it for, not for her own benefit, but to help other people recognise the historic value of a place like that to Bristol.
A: So she’s kind of interested in protecting the history and the heritage of it
G: She’s very protective of it
D: But if it was open to the public I think everyone’d destroy it
C: It sounds like she does a lot of tours for foreign people – she was talking about a group of American tourists. Maybe they think everyone in Bristol already knows about it?
J: I asked how many people she has down there and they did 70 tours last year. We were the 13th this year. So it kind of makes you think it’s not really open to the public – you have to make an arrangement
A: I think maybe they just allow tourists and school groups down there cos it’s got a lot of history – but not the public, cos there could be damage and vandalism
As an 80by18 experience, the group agreed that it was more “educational” than “adventurous” (“I learnt a lot, I could feel the history hidden in the cliffs”; “it was good, but it wasn’t thrilling”). They were split as to whether the tour was something to be recommended or that other young people would enjoy. Jake – who describes himself as “immersed in history” – had immediately reported on our visit and shown photos to his history teacher, who had never heard of the site and was interested in a future class visit. Insights from the 80by18 pilot 2014 61
Amy felt that others, particularly younger children, would just want to explore it on their own and not get the full tour which she and some others had found a little dry. This led to brainstorming a range of creative suggestions about how the site – and the Go Underground experience – could be developed to be more appealing for young people, and potential alternative future uses.
A: Maybe you should have a challenge where you have to go and take a picture of something down there and come back with it?
C: You could use it as an underground cinema! It’d be ideal for that!
P: What sort of films would you show?
J: They should make a simulation film of exactly what it would’ve been like in the blitz and show it down there. And if there’s any surviving people who were down there in the war, invite them along and ask them how it really felt
D: If they had a bit of funding, they could make a little room to see exactly what it was like in the blitz. They could kit it out totally authentic
J: You could do a re-enactment, sleep down there with just a cushion and a coat. I’d be up for that
C: Amy and me wouldn’t be sleeping down there with you lot [laughter]
A: [excited] It could be like an education centre thing! It would be like when we were in primary – remember that project we did [Chloe, Jake] where we were all hiding under the table? They could have little speakers like telling the story as you went down – showing little clips. It would be Insights from the 80by18 pilot 2014 62
amazing. Or what they could do is they could turn it into a haunted house type thing...like a whole experience of the blitz and stuff.
The group also questioned 28 of their school peers about their own experience of accessing underground sites, via an online survey. Of these, over half (57%) had visited one, either in Bristol or further afield. Caves, in particular at Wookey Hole and Cheddar Gorge were the most visited, while at least one respondent had previously visited Clifton Rocks Railway. Most visits had been family trips (41%), others on school trips (27%), with friends (18%) or with youth groups (9%). The majority of respondents (58%) hadn’t heard of any of the underground sites in Bristol we had discovered through research. Of those that were known, the joint most referenced (4 respondents each) were Redcliffe Caves, Caverns under the city centre, and Clifton Rocks Railway – all of which require special arranged access other than on Open Doors Day, which only 12% of respondents had previously heard of. More than half (54%) said they would like to visit one of these sites (a further 35% were unsure). They said they would be most likely to visit with families or on organised trips (with school or a youth group), though 31% would consider going independently, on their own or with friends.
Case Study 3 – Visit a Different Place of Worship
This activity describes Bristol as a multi-faith, multi-ethnic city. It encourages young people to find out about religious beliefs and practices different to one’s own by visiting unfamiliar places of worship. It proposes that ‘different religions and ways of thinking can be inspiring and interesting’ without necessarily ‘changing your own [faith], or starting to believe in religion at all: it may make you even more sure of what you already believe’. The Insights from the 80by18 pilot 2014 63
experience is listed in the ‘take a risk’ category, and was developed out of multiple suggestions from individuals and organisations at design stage for activities which promoted inter-faith and/or inter-ethnic harmony and tolerance. Another theme it tapped into from suggested ideas was encouraging young people’s physical and intellectual mobility within a city in which social divisions (including religious and ethnic) also map onto geography to a significant extent. Hence, the notion of ‘risk’ here invokes stepping out of cultural comfort zones, rather than any physical danger.
Why do it? The Merchants Academy group selected the experience in the latter part of our project. Having already been on several enjoyable visits they had begun to view the list – quite reasonably – in terms of what each experience might offer as an after school outing. In school based sessions across several weeks, we discussed and researched what options were open to us. A Sikh Gurdwara (temple) was eventually chosen as the preferred option because it was a religion and culture which none of the group had had any contact with from their schools or local communities, nor any other prior knowledge. We had previously considered a range of other possible places of worship, notably Buddhist or Pagan, but were unable to easily find information about the location or practicalities of such a visit within Bristol.
How did they make it happen? Setting up a visit to the Gurdwara involved some web research conducted together, starting from the links to Bristol multi-faith and tolerance forums listed on the 80by18 page but moving beyond them. Identifying the webpages of three Gurdwaras, we made contact by email and a phone calls – which the group proposed I make. Discussing this process of opened up a set of issues and anxieties around whether as white English people – some of whom identified as Christians, others as atheists – we would be welcomed and accepted in a ‘different’ Insights from the 80by18 pilot 2014 64
place of worship.17 One young researcher proposed that – when I made contact – I “don’t say what religion we all are, just in case”. When probed on why, she felt that “they might find it disgraceful to let Christians into their own private culture”. Another suggested that – in any “foreign” place of worship, notably “a temple or a mosque” – while the majority would be welcoming, a significant minority would probably be openly hostile to visitors not of that faith. There was also a degree of uncertainty about visiting a geographical area of the city that was considerably more ethnically diverse than their own and associated with new and established migrant populations, where only one member of the group had recent firsthand experience (through a familial connection).
These concerns then led to a mature and open – but impassioned – 20 minute discussion about Bristol, and England, as a multi-faith and multi- ethnic society and the differing experiences and issues they felt this had raised; in their own lives and that they had encountered in media or from friends or family. In this conversation, several scare stories were raised and debated about the encroachment of ‘immigrant’ culture on English cultural life. Differing viewpoints and opinions were shared in this conversation, and a consensus was arrived at that a distinction should be made in any religion between “extremists” and a more moderate majority. Nonetheless it was clear that – for most of the group, bar one – visiting a Gurdwara had been chosen partly because it was sufficiently ‘different’ and yet less threatening than they felt a Mosque would have been based on their limited experience. 17 I (Paul) was nominally included in the collective The visit itself was a profoundly embodied learning experience from the group definition of “native” English, while making it clear in discussions around the issue moment of arrival when, spotting the building (an old primary school) from that – having grown up in London of mixed- the minibus and despite being able to recognise it from a large orange flag ethnicity South African parentage – I consider myself “British” foremost (rather than English), and the Sikh khanda emblem in the windows – one of the group noted that but hold dual citizenship and am a religious “it ain’t what I expected: it don’t really look like a typical temple”. Entering the agnostic. Insights from the 80by18 pilot 2014 65
building, there was at first a palpable nervousness from the group – particularly around issues of taking off shoes, covering hair, and how to behave in relation to unfamiliar religious symbols and artefacts. As the visit “I actually think it’s progressed, and due in significant part to the warm and open conversational a really good place to style and calm demeanour of Mr Singh our host, the group noticeably visit, cos they don’t relaxed and began asking questions and offering observations. We sat for 30 minutes in a classroom area, the walls adorned with displays and alphabets care what religion or in the Gurmukhi script, and conversed with Mr Singh – responding to young race you are....it’s all people’s prepared and ad-libbed questions – gave us a detailed account of the origins, beliefs, and practices of the Sikh faith and the history of this about equality” Gurdwara and the Sikh community in Bristol. We were served chai tea and Indian sweets, and this was followed by a thorough tour of the building including the sacred spaces, as well as a demonstration of prayer rituals and explanations of the artefacts, customs and different events each room was used for.
Following the visit – on the drive home and the following week – the young researchers all reflected very positively on the experience and also their prior uncertainty. YP3, who had been amongst the most reticent, noted that “I actually think it’s a really good place to visit, cos they don’t care what religion or race you are....it’s all about equality”. Several group members suggested that they would be more likely to feel comfortable and confident about visiting other places of worship, with one strongly proposing a further visit to a Buddhist centre as a follow up research activity or independently. Others felt pleased that they had experienced – albeit briefly – an unfamiliar part of the city, with one noting that it had provoked a sense of adventure and inquisitiveness most familiar from being on holiday when “you feel like you have to explore everything. But when you’re in Bristol you feel like you know it all anyway”. Insights from the 80by18 pilot 2014 66
The young researchers noted that the most memorable parts of the visit were sensory: the smell of curry being cooked in the langar (free kitchen) for the evening meal; the unfamiliar tastes of the spicy chai tea and homemade Indian sweets we were served, and the karah parasaad (holy food) we were offered in the prayer room; the quiet serenity and intricate decor of the sacred spaces; the sensation of walking around barefoot, and learning through imitation how Sikhs offer prayer by bowing and touching palms to heart and head or touching foreheads to the ground. Reflection on these sensory experiences then led to several conversations in subsequent weeks about the similarities and differences to other religious practices and traditions.
Reflecting on their experiences as a whole, the young researchers reflected simply that “getting out of school” was in almost all cases of great value in itself, and added a different dimension to learning:
P: ...What’s powerful about learning outside of school?
D: Well your brain isn’t active in class. And when you repeat stuff, it gets boring. So going on trips, it sort of like...
G: It keeps you more active and like willing to learn...
A: That’s why it’s better to go on trips. Or at least some trips
D: Yeah, we need to get out more!
Yet there was something additional in the process of choosing and arranging visits for 80by18 research. Accessing these otherwise seemingly hidden places put them in a position of invited guests who Insights from the 80by18 pilot 2014 67
were gaining privileged access to spaces that were either not generally open to the public or were ‘off the beaten path’ and different from the The young people had types of places they would usually visit, either on a school trip or in their gained confidence, out-of-school lives. From the visits themselves, and reflection conversations afterwards, several themes emerged about what affect these experiences and reported feeling had on the young people. much more safe and comfortable in these ●● It was clear that the materiality of the places and people we encountered – including the sensory experience of the spaces – particular spaces played a crucial role in the learning and thinking that took place. This was not an experience that could have been replicated in school or at home or online. Being there, smelling, tasting, feeling the place, mattered.
●● Before all visits there was a sense of excitement and anticipation, but most young people also expressed a degree of uncertainty and in some cases fear and anxiety about one or more visits, which stemmed from a genuine stepping outside of comfort zones. Afterwards, the young people had gained a new confidence, and reported feeling much more safe and comfortable in these particular spaces and organisations – and keener and more likely to visit others of a similar type.
●● Each visit resulted in new knowledge, which included knowledge about the relationships of organisations and spaces to the city (and to each other), their accessibility to young people, their purpose and ‘core businesses’, the types of learning and experience that they could offer and where these might conceivably lead in their own or other young people’s lives. Insights from the 80by18 pilot 2014 68
Case Study 4 – Going it alone
The young researchers group provides insight into the types of experiences and reflections that emerge when 80by18 experiences are pursued in a relatively structured programme of after-school activity – crucially, with the mediation and motivation of an adult. However the project is designed to also, even primarily, be used in a much more independent way by young people, pursuing individual or multiple experiences on the list in their own time, for instance with families, friends and peers, or in some cases alone.
Workshops were held in three secondary schools for students who had expressed an interest in becoming young researchers, ambassadors who would promote the project to peers, or “testers”. Two such young people were a pair of boys named Morgan and Harry from Brislington Enterprise College in South East Bristol. School friends, in Years 10 and 9 respectively, they had first heard about the project in Autumn term 2013 through their involvement with the school council, facilitated by the charity South Bristol Youth (an 80by18 pilot year partner). In a pre-launch workshop at school which they invited Paul in to lead, they and eight of their peers were introduced to the project and practiced some qualitative research skills such as writing reflective field notes and interviewing their peers. They then both attended the soft launch of the website, where their role along with other young researchers included informally interviewing adult attendees and collecting suggestions for the 80th experience.
From then on, Morgan and Harry pursued the list independently – completing experiences primarily in their free time, together and separately, sending by email periodic reports with their findings, reflections, photographs and (in the case of some experiences) creative products. Insights from the 80by18 pilot 2014 69
Interviewing them together in late May 2014, they had already completed 28 of the 80.18 Describing these, one by one, it became clear that they made a conceptual distinction between completed experiences into three major ‘types’ (see table overleaf).
18 And by mid July, had produced a film documenting their experiences – see https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=kbBLKOGK_iA Insights from the 80by18 pilot 2014 70
Type 1 – “There and then” How done Most significant thing
Paddle in fountain When passing with young cousins Making new friends
Climb a tree On family walk in Ashton Court Fun, not done since younger
Pooh sticks When out for day with friends A laugh
Watch the tide go out On a school trip to Swanage Paying attention
Slave trade On 80by18 day – Mshed Thinking about the past
Work out why harbour’s floating On 80by18 day Learning how city works/ was built
Slidey Rock On 80by18 day Exploring new part of the city
See Bristol from above On 80by18 day – Cabot tower Good view; geography of city
Meet an extinct animal On 80by18 day – Bristol museum Seeing inside a new museum
Spend day on Bristol time On 80by18 day Unusual; learning history
Taste something different On 80by18 day – St Nic’s market
Type 2 – via structured activity How done Most significant thing
Prepare to save a life DoE award first aid training, school New skills and knowledge
Share ideas with Mayor Through South Bristol Youth Board Chance to be listened to
Grow a Bristolian Frog Put frogspawn in school pond Knowledge of biology
Rock Climbing With Scouts group New skills and confidence
Cook on an open fire On Youth Board residential Doing something together Insights from the 80by18 pilot 2014 71
Doing something positive for local Organise your own street party With Scouts group community; cooperation
Swim outdoors With Scouts group, Brecon trip Excitement
Spanning Type 2 & 3 – structured activity > How done Most significant thing independent planning
Joined organised tidy-up and planting day at Sort out your streets Recognition letter from Mayor Brislington Brook, with school group
Learn a circus trick Organised a workshop in school
Entered and won edible garden competition Project management and budgeting skills; Grow something to eat – developed project back at school Recognition
Type 3 – Independently planned How done Most significant thing
Graffiti Hunt With friends Loads of Banksys; wanding city
Take over Bristol on a bike Signed up for Bristol Biggest Bike ride Sense of achievement
Get sponsored for charity Completed a fun run Sense of achievement
Festival Researched online and attended two Day out, learnt about food
Build a den With friends, local scrub/woodland Re-using discarded materials
Create the next Wallace and Gromit At home with animation app/ Lego New technical skills
Technical skills; sharing own 80by18 Make a film At home/ in school together experiences
Go underground Avon gorge caves Exciting day out
Hunt down source of Bristlington Brook With friends, using google maps Finding somewhere great close to home
Create a new Bristol game At home using free app New technical skills; pleasing end product Insights from the 80by18 pilot 2014 72
Firstly, there were those which they called the “there and then” experiences. These had been done with minimal planning or opportunistically, either when passing (such as paddling in the fountains on a sunny day), when out and about with family and friends (climbing a tree in Ashton court on a family walk), or purposefully setting out for the day together during school holidays to complete as many as possible (sliding down the slidey rock; visiting two museums to meet an extinct animal and learn about the slave trade; tasting something new from a market; all the while spending the day on Bristol time). The boys noted that these tended to be experiences that didn’t require much reference to the instructions or resources on the experience web-pages. However having initially studied the website at some length and printed a paper copy of the list in ‘short form’ (to be used as a tick-sheet) had led to them holding ‘an idea in the back of [our] mind[s] about what’s on there’, or ‘certain key things on it that I know I want to do’ so that ‘when you see it you go “oh that’s an 80by18 thing” and you just do it’.19
Secondly, there were those experiences which linked in with other projects, programmes, or structured activity they were involved with – both inside and outside of school. Examples of these included: ‘preparing to save a life’, which Morgan did as part of his Duke of Edinburgh award first aid training (a free choice in the school PE programme); sharing ideas with the mayor, by writing letters about youth issues including transport via their involvement with Bristol Youth Board; organising a street party, as part of activity with a local scouts group. For Harry, these were things that were ‘more challenging...you need a lot more encouragement and it needs 19 collaboration...[we] need[ed] something to push [us] before we could get it The pair did, however, when on their ‘80by18 day’ around the city centre together, convert done and move on to other things’. The boys rationalised that, while these the project website into a mobile app using a were primarily experiences that had come up in the course of other free resource. This, they said, helped them by allowing them to reference the web content structured activity and hence that they ‘might have done this year anyway’, and instructions on their borrowed iPods while they were also optional; the fact that they were already on their personal on the move without internet access. Insights from the 80by18 pilot 2014 73
radars by being ‘on the list’ added an extra level of motivation or swayed their choices to do them (in some cases from a range of other options).
Third in their typology of the experiences were those which they completed or initiated independently but, compared to type 1, needed significantly more by way of motivation, planning, commitment and (in most cases) time. These included “one off” experiences done alone or together, in a day or over multiple chunks of time, frequently involving producing a creative end product: making a computer game, producing an animation using lego, building and flying a model hot air balloon. Others involved the support and collaboration of others – such as initiating a group to clear up a section of Brislington Brook (‘sort out your streets’), and ‘building a den’ with a group of friends in a patch of woodland close to home using primarily debris and found objects.
There were a small number which straddled type 2 and 3 in that they began as an opportunity (or an option) encountered through structured activity, but led on to something involving more independent ownership and management on one or both of the boys’ parts. A significant example of this was the experience ‘grow something to eat’. Morgan encountered, through his work on the school council, a competition run by Bristol Zoo inviting secondary school students to submit a design plan for an Edible Garden. He was encouraged to enter, did so, and won first prize which led to his design being built at the Zoo, a series of visits facilitated by the school, and a day of voluntary work (another of the 80). Motivated by this experience, he later initiated a project back at school where he applied for funding from the school budget and sought technical support from a friendly Design & Technology technician, and labour from a group of school mates, to build raised beds in the school garden in which they had recently begun planting fruit and vegetables. Insights from the 80by18 pilot 2014 74
A feature of type 3 experiences for the boys was that they tended to rely more heavily on reference back to the web-pages with their instructions and links. However both Morgan and Harry reported that they tended to use 80by18’s web content for initial inspiration and guidance, rather than following it precisely. They also – by necessity or happen-chance – sought and discovered other resources to assist them, for instance, for the animation experience: ‘I was just watching TV one day and they mentioned this new animation app that was free – I forget what it’s called - so I downloaded it there and then and [later] used it’ (Morgan).
The boys also discussed those they had not done yet, which they were planning to do, and why they had not yet pursued them. Their ‘hit list’ at the time of interview included ‘seeing the inside of somewhere strange’ and ‘getting sponsored for charity’. In both cases, they were beginning to make plans but in the former had been held up by a lack of knowledge about an immediate access opportunity – like several of the experiences the web- page instructions focus on Bristol Open Doors day which takes place in September – and in the latter case awaiting a particular fun run event Morgan had found out about through The Bristol Post website.
Paul asked the boys what they felt were the most significant outcomes for them from experiences they had completed – both individually and in total. They noted that there were many, including a sense of purposeful exploration of the city – both familiar and unfamiliar, near and far from home:
Harry: You’ll [already] know lots of places in Bristol from memory, but the list sort of tells you different things about those places – and introduces areas you aren’t familiar with. You discover things that weren’t quite what you thought. For example – I didn’t actually know about the slidey rock. I thought it was a massive rock on the gorge. But going there to slide Insights from the 80by18 pilot 2014 75
down it made me discover the whole area where you can go and look over the gorge and there’s caves there too. It’s a completely different It was the doing it area – I’ve never seen the suspension bridge from that angle. It’s really together [that] made it nice round there, and it’s good to see a place which is a lot different from more of an experience. where you live New things can be Morgan: I wandered to more places and walked most places, even close quite uncomfortable to home, like Brislington Brook. I used googlemaps to find it. It’s a really because you don’t nice area, but quite hard to find access. I’ve been there three times since know what’s going already. to happen They also referred to new knowledge and skills, for instance knowledge about nutrition for animals (volunteering at the zoo; grow a Bristolian frog), about Bristol’s past (slave trade; Bristol time), and skills ranging from technical processes of creating (building games, animation, hot air balloons), to planning, coordinating and motivating others to achieve something (sort out your streets; organise a street party), to budgeting and managing the execution of a project (edible garden).
Yet the most significant thing, they said, was the shared experiences and sense of mutual achievement:
H: It was the doing it together [that] made it more of an experience. New things can be quite uncomfortable because you don’t know what’s going to happen. Having someone there you can fall back on is important, and you support them too. [And now] we’ve got all those shared experiences to look back on
M: [And] the sense of achievement you get – doing things without even realising it, like watching the tide go out. Insights from the 80by18 pilot 2014 76
H: For me [the list] is showing you that there’s so much more to do in the city than you thought was possible. It can make you feel a bit differently on life actually – seeing that there’s so much to do and you’ve got to set yourself goals cos you might not be able to do them all in the future
This latter point led to a discussion on how to structure the project in future to encourage greater participation. It was clear throughout their interview and all our interactions that the boys had seen the list as a challenge – and doggedly tried to tick off as many as possible. They were adamant that – at least for teenagers – the project should be an independent challenge with a goal setting and reward system build into it. Morgan in particular was vociferous that the project should explain the benefits of completing the experiences in a way more clearly articulated towards and accessible to young people – perhaps with the addition of short videos or talking heads on the web pages. He then felt that it should implement a system of rewards along the lines of Blue Peter Badges – which allow privileged and free access to harder to access places and experiences for those who independently complete a number of experiences.
Case Study 5: Using 80by18 with schools
Independently of the University team, a number of schools have picked up and used the 80by18 resource. One of the First Partners and a driving force behind the project is Nicholas Garrick, CEO of Lighting up Learning, who has seeded the 80by18 idea in particular in four schools in Bristol and Bath. He has observed that schools use the resource in very different ways. A number of them focus on the content of the website and work with that; others take the idea of 80by18 and use it to generate new lists of activities, or to frame curriculum activities in different ways. He argues that in many Insights from the 80by18 pilot 2014 77
ways, the 80by18 list has had ‘more impact on the teachers in the school than it has on the children, because many of the teachers don’t live in the The list gives areas where they teach, so they don’t know what you can do. The list gives prompts for the prompts for the imagination for the teachers in the room’. He has used the list as part of INSET days and encouraged teachers themselves to try out imagination for the the activities themselves, to get to know the city. teachers in the room
He noticed, in a way that echoed the young researchers from Merchants Academy, that teachers saw the real value in the 80by18 resource lying in getting young people out of the classroom. He also observed that the experience of doing the list at school was a prompt for family activities. ‘The school being the kickstart for these activities has been the impetus for the children to go home and ask to do these activities again’. As we learnt from the Manchester and Peterborough Curriculum projects, the teachers also reported that it built better relationships between teachers and students who participated in these activities together.
Nic observed that potentially the most important benefit of using 80by18 in schools, was in its potential to build relationships between schools and parents. He noted that one school had invited parents to join in a dawn chorus walk (one of the activities) and had 39 parents participating, more than often turn up to parents evenings. The same school is also giving the list out to children before holidays, asking children to complete one activity and report back to school. It has been particularly useful as a resource for parents new to England as the school uses the site to say ‘this is what Bristol is like, these are the types of people who live in Bristol, these are the things you can do in Bristol’.
Many of the schools are creating local lists – something that will over time generate more ideas and activities to complement and develop the ‘main Insights from the 80by18 pilot 2014 78
list’. They are developing new challenges such as the primary school that reworked the main list idea of taking a ride along the length of a bus route, who have set their children the challenge of, in groups, with a teacher, taking the next bus that turns up outside the school, riding it for 10 minutes, and then working out how to find their way back to the school. Others are using them as ways of generating local knowledge, with five year old children asking every visitor to the school (including OFSTED inspectors) for ideas of things to do in the local area before you are 18.
Nic’s core observation was that the idea of 80by18 – setting aside the website itself – has huge potential to ‘develop relationships with the community, not using the school language’, to create links between primary and secondary schools, and to enable teachers really get to know their local area. Nic, in particular, has made the case that the influence and potential of the 80by18 project may lie beyond the actual list of resources and activities and more in the idea and the changed mindset that it might encourage in schools. Discussion 79
Discussion
This report has given a narrative account of the development of 80by18 over the last two years. It is clear, however, that any conclusions at this stage need to be tentative, and there is still much more to do to realise the ambitions of the project. Nevertheless, there has been much to learn from the process and the research already, which will steer the project going forward.
We want, at the end of this first pilot year, to reflect on how far the project has achieved its aims and to explore what the next steps might be
Aim 1: To mobilise the resources of a city to support young people’s learning and development: the public debate
Our aims for this project were driven by three key considerations: that cities are potentially powerfully rich resources for young people’s learning that are too often untapped; that young people have a right to participate in the public, civic and commercial lives of cities and to influence what happens there; and that the sorts of contemporary economic, technological and environmental challenges that young people (and adults) are facing requires young people to participate in activities and experiences that simply cannot be provided by schools alone. To that end, we wanted to use 80by18 to prompt a public debate about the experiences young people could and should have in the city, and the sorts of resources that might support this. We wanted, moreover, to encourage organisations to come forward to showcase what they were already doing and to explore what they might offer in future.
The workshops and events in 2013 stimulated this debate with some degree of success, as did the open call for ideas and the media coverage. The list of 80 activities in the end represents a very wide range of experiences and activities that over 1000 people suggested would be valuable for children in the city. Discussion 80
There were several key lessons from our attempt to get this debate going. First, that in order to get a wide and diverse response, face-to-face engagement is key. An online and postcard-based call was insufficient on its In order to get a own. Face-to-face collection from people who didn’t yet know about the wide and diverse project could be done in numerous ways, but coordinated efforts by the response, face-to- project team and others in spaces such as schools, community forums, and on the streets were most successful. Second, that people didn’t necessarily face engagement know what kind of ideas we were looking for. The venn diagram was a useful is key way of communicating this, but people still found it hard to connect the things they knew and were passionate about to the ethos of the project and list. Some interpretation and revision was necessary to transform many of the ‘good’ ideas that came in into ‘great’ 80by18 ideas. In the end it may be that a call for ‘resources’ rather than a call for ‘ideas’ would have more successfully elicited useful information. Third, that the ideas that came in still needed much ‘fleshing out’ in terms of practicality and resource and it was important to have input from the individuals and organisations who best knew the resources and themes at issue. We responded to this with a series of ‘short listing’ events, but with hindsight we might have developed a more fluid process – involving a wider range of expertise – and encouraged more developed responses than one line ideas in the call-out. This may also have led to the surfacing of more by way of new or existing offers.
There are also significant limitations on how far we can claim to have achieved the aim of mobilising all the resources of the city to date. In particular, a significant missing sector from initial networks and the project as a whole was Bristol businesses – small and large – and, despite best efforts it was difficult to ‘get them in the room’ and secure their participation. This may well reflect the limitations of an approach that was reliant on personal networks, as well as some entrenched perspectives and ways of engaging on the part of businesses which – we found in our attempts to Discussion 81
reach out to them – tended to see start-up initiatives such as this one as not requiring their involvement, or not viable to support until a later stage. What is still missing The question of the mechanism by which commercial organisations might is a mechanism by make available what they have to offer to allay their fears of being swamped by thousands of children, is still unanswered, and suggests which businesses that a gatekeeping/mediating organisation would be helpful to broker can allow young people relationships between businesses and young people. Some of these are to engage with the core currently in operation, but most rely on volunteering around school goals and priorities – what is still missing is a mechanism by which businesses of their activities can allow young people to engage with the core of their activities – from designing and building aeroplanes to selling cars to making films.
Despite these caveats, we should recognise that the process of bringing groups, individuals and organisations together across the city to make something rather than just talk about what ‘should be done’, was an effective way of building a common purpose across highly diverse and sometimes competing interests. We also note that the themes that emerged from the debate can be understood to say something important about what participants thought a city should be offering its young people. These are experiences that offer meaningful opportunities to act as citizens (see the ‘Worldchanging’ category), that offer opportunities for play and for silliness (see ‘City as Playground’ and ‘Random’), that offer opportunities for reflection and tranquillity (see ‘Slow Down’), that help children to understand change and the tensions of history (see ‘Back to the Future’), that build children’s capacity to live well in conditions of adversity and challenge (see ‘Take a Risk’ and ‘Survive and Thrive’) and that encourage their creativity and self-reliance (see ‘Do it ourselves’). Taken together, these provide a manifesto not only for the sorts of opportunities a city should provide its young people but also a means of reflecting on the resources, infrastructure and investment currently available to enable all young people in the city to Discussion 82
do so. They provide the basis for further collaboration and action in the city beyond the design of the web resource. The inevitable next question to explore with the network involved in the project to date, is how best can There is a case for these experiences be offered to young people? schools to play a much more active role The pilot research also made visible just how valuable it might be for young in ‘twinning’ and people to make lateral links across the city, to different communities and ‘exchanges’ with other cultures, rather than to imagine a centralised model of participation in the city – towards a common set of high status experiences. For example, the schools and young value for the young researchers of visiting the Gurdwara was related in large people across the city part to simply visiting and getting to know a different community in the city. Arguably, there is a case for schools to play a much more active role in ‘twinning’ and ‘exchanges’ with other schools and young people across the city, rather than with schools across the world.
Aim 2: Make these resources visible and legible to young people, providing insight into how they might access them: the website
The early decision to design a website, and to focus it around a simple and non-interactive list, had clear benefits in terms of outlining a simple and compelling challenge for the city and fostering public debate. It does have limitations, however, in that it assumes that the online environment is the best place to “make resources visible” and takes little account of the fact that the battle for attention in online spaces is fierce. In a context of rich social media, moreover, a flat site has serious limitations.
The core contribution of the site, however, is the pulling together of a significant set of resources, materials and information. Indeed, we had significantly underestimated the task of content generation. It became clear that it was important, for example, that we not simply have a list and a single Discussion 83
resource, but that we had to research each experience thoroughly and provide good links and information. Heavy investment in this backend research meant that the front end copy writing and interface was relatively under (and arguably insufficiently) resourced. Despite this, the site itself does the job of acting as a holding space for a huge range of city resources in a way that is not matched by any other facility we are aware of.
The question of how these resources should be best presented to young people remains an ongoing source of debate. The site was designed for all age groups up to 18, and there remains a question of whether this is appropriate, would we, for example, be better designing the site for a smaller age range (there is a sense that it is most useful for the 7-13 age group)? Should users be able to filter activities by age group? These are not simply interface design issues, they represent core assumptions about whether experiences should be restricted or promoted to different age groups. To date, we have resisted this, wanting to retain the project as a space that recognises that children develop at different rates, and that the simplest most accessible activities may also be desirable and interesting for the oldest children.
Aim 3: To encourage young people to make the most of these resources
The list itself was never enough for our aspirations. We were interested in getting young people involved and actively participating in a range of experiences across the city, and in developing their sense of their rights to participate in public space. We saw some early indications of positive results in this area in relation to the small numbers of children we worked with this year, these included: Discussion 84
a. Increased independent mobility around the city b. Less uncertainty, fear, and increased confidence to access spaces and interact with host-organisations outside of cultural milieux c. New knowledge about organisations and their relationship to city resources d. Exposure to and positive reflection on different ways of learning than usual school-based experiences, including increased attention to the sensory and the material.
However, it is in working out how best to encourage young people to make the most of the resources of the city that we believe there is most work to be done. In particular, we think that there are two areas for further development 1. The nature of the ‘challenge’ itself; and 2. The question of how to make it easier and more appealing for young people to participate in these activities.
First, what is the challenge that 80by18 is setting? The 80by18 idea emerged as a useful ‘hook’ for the project in its early days. Over time, however, this framing of activities poses a set of as yet unanswered questions. Is this a competitive project – will or should there be prizes for people who complete more or less of the activities? Will the activities change over time – is there a time limit for completing them? Should they be sequenced in level of difficulty, with some ‘opening up’ only if others have been completed? Could/should the list be ‘gamified’ to encourage participation? Should they be physically located and tagged in the city so that you can, in the words of Pokemon, ‘catch them all’? Similarly, the idea of a set of activities to work through immediately raises the question of whether it would be more motivating/valuable for young people participating in this, to gain some Discussion 85
accreditation for doing the activities. Indeed, the possibility of developing both a formal qualification and a new ‘Mozilla open badge’20 has been mooted and explored this year. These are questions that might usefully be There are explored experimentally – with different groups of young people participating infrastructural, either in a competitive, a collaborative, an accredited or an ‘unrewarded’ use social and economic of the list. factors that militate against or in favour Second, and more fundamentally, enabling young people to participate in these activities is not simply a question of intrinsic or extrinsic motivation. of young people’s There are infrastructural, social and economic factors that militate against participation in or in favour of young people’s participation in the city. Research findings the city from the work with young researchers revealed that the way young people – even from relatively similar age groups and socio-economic backgrounds – interpreted the list as a whole and individual activities, played a significant role in how they approached, made sense of and understood the experiences and the impact that these experiences had upon them. Who they carried out experiences with and how they did them were also highly significant.
The young researcher’s group who worked with Paul as mediator of their activities were highly dependent upon this mediation to motivate their deep participation in the activities. However the other young researchers who took on the list as an independent challenge – (notably, these were young people already incredibly motivated and involved in much extra-curricula activity both in and out of school) – found great reward in completing challenges with their friend, and with limited adult involvement. Crucially, as the ‘going it alone’ case study demonstrates, these young people found creative ways to participate in the more demanding experiences through structured activity or groups they were already involved with. 20 http://openbadges.org Discussion 86
Both the young researchers who worked in a closely mediated way and those who ‘went it alone’ reported and were observed to have experienced some similar impacts – such as increased confidence and certainty about accessing new spaces, and a connection of learning experience to the materiality of places and things. However the mediated group – perhaps predictably given that it was the focus of our mini-projects and reflections – seemed to gained more new knowledge about the organisation and people they had visited, and how these were constituted and connected to the city and could support out-of-school learning. The ‘go it alones’, however had increased their mobility and knowledge of physical places and spaces in the city, how they connect together, including discovering exciting new locations and resources both close to home and far afield which they had already integrated into their ‘mental maps’ of the city.
What this demonstrates, of course, is that simply knowing these experiences, organisations and resources exist in the city is insufficient to enable young people’s participation. Rather, the young people needed to overcome financial obstacles (the cost of travelling around the city), anxieties about encountering people from other cultures and parts of the city, organisational blocks such as not knowing who to contact and how to speak to those in city organisations, as well as parental and personal anxiety about simply doing things on their own.
Indeed, the temptation is to say that it is impossible and unhelpful to identify young people themselves as the target audience for this information; rather, we should reorient the information towards adults who can positively mediate young people’s participation. And there is something to be said for thinking about whether this is a resource, in fact, for youth services, parents and teachers rather than children themselves. Discussion 87
Against this, however, we would argue that it is precisely in young people overcoming these obstacles and developing these capacities that The lesson from the pilot the value of the 80by18 project will lie. And in particular, we have become is the critical importance more aware of a potential middle-ground between a concern with whether children can either participate in the city independently (i.e. the idea of the of young people’s lone child navigating public spaces) and the idea of the child in the family or friendship groups in dependent on schools (i.e the world of the managed and mediated school mediating and making trip). Instead, we want to propose that the lesson from the pilot phase of this sense of the city, and in project is the critical importance of young people’s friendship groups in mediating and making sense of the city, and in building their confidence and building their confidence capacity to try new things, explore new places and spaces, and take on new challenges. Indeed, many of the children were clearly motivated to participate in activities precisely because of their friends’ involvement rather than the intrinsic interest in the experience. Activities with friends, moreover, seemed to build confidence in both children and parents around issues of child safety.
In exploring how best to enable young people to actively and positively participate in the city, therefore, the most important lesson from the pilot phase of the project is that we need to develop a shift in our thinking as adults about how to support young people. Rather than focusing on young people either as atomised and vulnerable individuals, or as students in school, or as children in a family, we want to propose that we alter our design thinking to focus on imagined user groups of children in friendship and peer networks. Understanding the potential role of peer group champions, and peer groups as a means of building up courage and capabilities, is an important area for future development. Further research on this will form the basis of the coming year’s research activity. Practical Next Steps 88
Practical Next Steps
If 80by18 is anything, it is a way of making the city visible, a way of encouraging the city to get involved in helping its young people, and a way of enabling young people to get out and participate in the city. The next steps for the project could mistakenly focus simply on how to maintain and improve the current website. While this is necessary, the aim of 80by18 is not to secure the longevity of a particular website, it is to encourage a broader coalition of people and organisations, as well as the resources to support them, to enable young people to experience a more diverse range of activities than may be possible in schools.
Moreover, the project is not intended to become another commercial product, taking a place in a competitive market-place in terms of youth provision. It is about acting as a platform – through the online resource, through events, networks and relationships – to enable young people to occupy the city with confidence.
To that end, we are proposing a number of next steps that are concerned with building on what has been created so far. These next steps outline what the University will do, but also identify the areas in which we hope to join a wider coalition of the willing to support young people’s learning in and exploration of the city.
Priorities for next steps:
Priority 1: Identify and establish ways of encouraging and supporting young people, youth services and schools, to use the 80by18 site - in order to explore its potential to support young people’s place based learning and participation in the city: Practical Next Steps 89
Priority 2: Maintain the momentum of the existing rich network of organisations and resources who have been involved in 80by18 to date, in order to continue to develop the idea of a city-wide coalition interested in supporting young people’s place based learning and development
Priority 3: Identify a long term ‘owner’ for the 80by18 site who will support it over the long term to ensure that there is a commitment to maintaining the information on the site for at least 3 years, to allow the longer term development of a movement to promote learning in and through the city.
Priority 4: Further research and development of website to address current problems of lack of interactivity, and to better understand the factors that may be motivating/demotivating for different groups of young people – e.g. competition, certification, phased access to experiences, shorter timeframes to completion.
Priority 5: To continue to work in collaboration with city organisations to collectively advocate for the transport, policy, infrastructure and economic changes needed to enable young people to fulfil their rights to inhabit the city.
We have established a ‘Friends of 80by18’ group to work towards these next steps. We also welcome approaches from organisations and individuals interested in working with us to achieve these aspirations. Notes 90
Notes
Note 1: Sample and methods for year 1 background research
7-11 year olds
Five workshops took place in three different primary schools, one each in East, North, and South Bristol. Workshops were led by researcher, Paul, in most cases with participation from class teachers and teaching assistants.
Each consisted of a number of group activities and games. These included children mapping their existing out-of-school activities using post-it notes on maps of the city, brainstorming most desirable or exciting activities (done or not done), and completing worksheets about the types of things that they did not currently do but would like to, their limitations in practical terms, and what barriers if any stopped them doing these things.
Some workshops also included an activity where children connected their brainstorming exercises to their hopes and fears for the future, and one activity they could do now that would help them in the future – writing one of each on a slip of paper and posting them anonymously into a box labelled: ‘the future’.
The characteristics of the three schools and the groups worked with are summarised below (based on information from Bristol City Council Census 2011 profile; Department for Education, EduBase2; Ofsted School Data Dashboard; Schools websites):
●● School 1 was a mixed-gender Academy in a neighbourhood in the East of Bristol with a slightly higher than average proportion economically active adults (76%, Bristol average 71%; England and Wales average Notes 91
70%) and where 15% of the population are from Black and Minority Ethnic Groups. The school had 30% of pupils eligible for Free School Meals (44% eligible at some time during the last 6 years), and 24% with English as a second language. 15% of pupils were recorded as having Special Educational Needs (SEN) and/or were on School Action. A workshop took place in a Year 6 class.
●● School 2 was a mixed gender Academy Converter in a neighbourhood in the North East of the city with a slightly lower than average proportion of economically active adults (69%) and a higher than average proportion of the population from Black and Minority Ethnic Groups (26%; Bristol average 16%; England and Wales average 14%). The school had 14% of pupils eligible for Free School Meals. Data was not available on SEN or ESL. Two workshops took place in two different Year 6 classes.
●● School 3 was a mixed gender Community school in a neighbourhood of South Bristol with a higher than average economically active adult population (79%) and lower than average proportion of the population from Black and Minority Ethnic Groups (8%). 25% of pupils were eligible for Free School Meals (38% within the last 6 years) and 11% had English as a second language. 12% of pupils had a an SEN statement or were on School Action. Two workshops were held, in mixed Year 3/4 classes. A whole-school assembly (juniors) was also held in this school, in which Paul and research intern Matthew Moutos introduced the project and invited pupils to suggest ideas via postcards or the website.
Research with teenagers was conducted through the following activities:
●● An evening of fieldwork at a youth club in the same neighbourhood as school 3. 15-20 young people aged 12-15 were informally interviewed Notes 92
about out-of-school activities, and some completed the mapping and post-it notes exercise.
●● A workshop with and three subsequent visits to a group of nine 16-17 year-olds, who were working with the social action charity Envision. This group consisted of 7 young women and 2 young men, from a geographically dispersed range of schools and sixth form colleges around the city. They were diverse in terms of social class and ethnic background. The group reflected on their own experiences growing up in Bristol, what they had memorably done and found of value, completed the mapping exercise, and brainstormed the barriers they felt they and their peers had faced in accessing out of school opportunities. They then decided to partner with the 80by18 project as part of their own research and campaigning around teenagers’ opportunities in Bristol.
●● A web survey designed and conducted in collaboration with the Envision group, which received 100 responses from peers in their secondary schools and their social media contacts. The survey collected basic demographic data, before asking 5 open response questions:
• What activities do you enjoy doing in Bristol? • Where do you do these activities? • What activities would you like to do that you do not already do? • What is stopping you from doing these activities? • What could stop this from being a problem? Notes 93
Note 2 – Participants in the First Partners Group
●● Steve Sayers (Windmill Hill City Farm)
●● Hannah Higginson (Watershed) ●● Roger Opie (Ablaze) ●● Nicholas Garrick (Lighting Up Learning) ●● Tim Leaman (ASDAN) ●● Philippa Bayley (Cabot Institute, Bristol Uni)
●● Sam Thomson (UWE) ●● Reethah Desai (Mshed) ●● Shawn Sobers (UWE) ●● Chris Luffingham (Independent) ●● James Lancaster (Bristol University) ●● Hugh Thomas (MyFutureMyChoice) ●● Alison Crowther (facilitator) ●●Matt Little (RIO) Notes 94
●●Sandra Stancliffe (English Heritage)
Note 3 – The List Curation Workshop
This event involved around 50 young people from five secondary schools. Young people undertook three sequential exercises with the ‘long-listed’ ideas, printed on cards:
First came a ‘swap-shop mingle’ –
●● Each young person was allocated two suggested (and already long-listed) ideas, printed on cards. They had to decide which one they preferred.
●● They then moved around the room, explaining what they had to others, trying to ‘sell’ and swap their least favourite card for one which they liked better.
●● When they had two ideas they were relatively happy with, they returned to groups and discussed each of the ideas in turn – voting to sort them into 3 piles: ‘keep it’, ‘bin it’ and ‘work on it’.
●● Votes for each idea were recorded, the top and bottom three in each pile were eliminated, and groups then discussed and wrote notes on flip chart paper about how to improve those remaining.
Second, groups swapped their total batches of ideas across other groups –
●● They repeated the final 2 steps of exercise one, voting on the ideas and sorting into 3 piles, eliminating the top and bottom, then discussing and making notes on the remaining. Notes 95
●● The groups fed back to the whole room on the 2 or 3 batches they’d worked through, focusing on the ideas they had liked best and how to make them even better.
The third exercise was to begin deciding how ideas should be grouped together, sorting them into categories and giving these names –
●● Each group worked with two or more of the batches of ideas they had rated in exercises one and two. They sorted them into piles of ideas that they felt belonged together, with the instruction ‘don’t think about it too hard, trust your instincts’
●● They agreed on a name for each of these emergent categories, and recorded them on a worksheet.
●● They then fed back and exchanged ideas on category names and content to the whole room Notes 96
Note 4: The 80by18 Top Level List and Categories
City as Playground
1 Take over Bristol on a bike 2 Hunt down the source of the Brislington brook 3 Reclaim your streets for play 4 Festival! 5 Picnic in the City 6 Graffiti Hunt 7 Follow that bus! 8 Finish one of Bristol’s long bike rides 9 Slide down the slidey rock 10 Get to all the different skate parks in Bristol
Take a Risk
11 Taste something really different 12 Discover a new sort of cinema 13 Visit a (different) place of worship 14 See the inside of somewhere strange 15 Ready, Set, Go! 16 Get mobile without your mobile 17 Climb a tree 18 Swim outdoors 19 Rockclimbing Notes 97
Random
20 See street art in action 21 Join in the Great Easton Pancake Day Race 22 Paddle in the fountains 23 Hear music played live 24 Make someone smile 25 Do the zombie walk 26 Learn a circus trick 27 Grow a Bristolian frog 28 Have a conversation using only your hands 29 Meet an artist
Survive and Thrive
30 Make something by hand 31 Visit a real farm 32 Find out where the science is going 33 Cook on an open fire 34 Build a den 35 Source a full meal without spending any money 36 Grow something to eat 37 Prepare to save a life 38 Make a local meal 39 Create your own energy 40 Make something new from something old Notes 98
Do It Ourselves
41 Create or fix a bike from recycled parts 42 Make your own hot air balloon 43 Create the next Wallace and Grommit 44 Busk for an hour 45 Make your own radio show 46 Put on an exhibition 47 Make and fly a kite 48 Make a film 49 Build your own Concorde 50 Become a Bristolian wordsmith
Slow Down
51 Bio-blitz your backyard 52 Discover the rare creatures living on Troopers Hill 53 Hear the dawn chorus 54 See the bluebells 55 Pooh Sticks! 56 Watch the tide go out 57 See the Severn bore 58 See the Bristol Peregrines 59 See Bristol from above 60 See the stars over the city Notes 99
Back to the Future
61 Rediscover the lost resort of Severn Beach 62 Meet an extinct animal 63 Work out why the harbour’s floating 64 Discover the truth about Bristol’s slave trade past 65 Find a giant’s footprint 66 Meet Purdown Percy 67 Spend a day on Bristol time 68 Revisit Bristol’s rebellions 69 Go underground
Change Your World
70 Volunteer for a Day 71 Sort out your streets 72 Share your ideas with the Mayor 73 Set up a youth market 74 Set up a social enterprise 75 Get sponsored for charity 76 Run a Campaign 77 See the law in action 78 Your rights, your vote 79 Organise your own street party