"There was something happening that I couldn't quite recognise. They're not from school. They don't look like a family group. Emma Warren, a journalist and author of Up the Youth Club: Illuminating a Hidden History, explains to Helen Pidd how she realised that the man she was observing was a youth worker. Bringing people in, dropping them out. I was watching someone extremely skilful."
"Warren outlines the devastating impact a decade of austerity has had on Britain's network of youth centres, and explains how the youth club is, in many ways, a distinctly British phenomenon shaped by the stark inequalities of the Industrial Revolution, the aftermath of the second world war and the optimism of the postwar era. Warren explores the substantial cultural impact such clubs have had on the country, and explains the difference a skilled youth worker can make to a young person's life."
An observer on a London tube noticed a man skilfully convening a group of young people and turning a carriage corner into an impromptu youth club. The youth club model developed in Britain from Industrial Revolution inequalities, postwar reconstruction and mid-20th-century optimism. A decade of austerity has severely reduced the network of youth centres and threatened their cultural influence. Skilled youth workers provide vital conversational and social spaces that can change young people's lives. A new UK government strategy for youth services aims to address decline, but significant questions remain about whether it can restore clubs from the brink.
Read at www.theguardian.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]