Wednesday, 03 April 2013

Come with a whoop, and come with a call

It’s been a depressing time just lately for any observer of social inclusion in the UK, and I’m going to try not to rehearse the reasons for that – although, wait, it’s hard not to make aslant reference to the bedroom tax, arguably the daftest piece of legislation contrived since Cromwell managed to put his point across (I note it was the subject of an ineffective EDM in parliament a whole nine months ago).

Playing outInstead, here’s some good news, I think. It's time to join your play fellows in the street. According to CYP Now, the Department of Health has put up £1m ‘for the development of play streets’ across England, to a consortium including Play England, London Play, Bristol’s Playing Out and Bristol University. 'Grats to them all.

However it’s not clear quite what ‘the development of play streets’ means, since, remarkably, the nearest I could come to an informative press release, offered by London Play and dated 22 March, doesn’t trouble to explain. CYP Now says ‘The consortium is deciding how it will use the money.’ That's a good idea. Don't worry, they'll think of something.


3 Apr 2013 21:34:52

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‘No life.’ Young people talking about poverty Last month I helped organise and run an event involving children and young people in poverty, so that government officials could hear them talk about their experiences. The slightly formal context of a conference venue was going to be unfamiliar for the participants, the timetable was very tight, and they would not know most of the others there. So we designed a mix of plenary and group sessions, exercises, discussions, and one short presentation; followed by a trip round the houses of parliament. We also had to take account of the fact that some of the young people had fairly complex backgrounds and there was always a chance that attention spans would be short and their behaviour could be what is euphemistically called ‘challenging’. One of the exercises was designed to allow some of the experience to be fictionalised: this gave the participants ‘permission’ to release some fairly strong concerns – and some personal aspirations - that otherwise might not have been shared. This post summarises that process. We had seven groups of about 5 or 6 per table, of mixed ages. Using a pre-printed worksheet, each group was asked to invent a character and describe their family background and the area where they lived. Prompt cards were provided but only the age of the child was prescribed, in order to ensure a variety. We used the carousel principle so that each table inherited the character created by others. The second stage required them to think about the skills, interests, fears and friendships of the character. We provided plenty of prompt cards for this stage, covering a broad mix of options to get people talking: some groups used these while others chose to draw or write, for example - Fears: ‘not being able to leave the estate’ ‘A bit afraid of new people. Doesn’t know what is happening.’ ‘He does not go to school so he don’t have a good ajication.’ They all offered a reasonable degree of consistency – that is to say, there were only a few apparent contradictions along the lines of ‘loner’ / ‘team player’. In the next stage, inheriting a character with some detail known about them, the participants were asked to think up a crisis (or crises) that affected the individual, and to describe the implications. As we had anticipated, this gave them no difficulties whatsoever, although there were one or two oddities – ‘No life. Goes into foster home & runs away. Police find him and Bob wants to stay with the policeman.’ ‘They move to a small stone hut.’ There was plenty of mention of adults in the household losing their jobs, plus imprisonment and quite unceremonially reported death. In the last group phase, they were asked to think through the future for the invented character they inherited, given what was known about their circumstances and the crisis which afflicted them. Here, what was striking was the sense of resilience in some of the outcomes (but not all): ‘Finally he got his...
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