Transforming youth policy – Experiences from My Generation project

A new paradigm in youth policies is needed

According to Robert Arnkil, too often the last stakeholders to be called upon to run, let alone design, youth projects are often the very people supposed to benefit from it. The young "beneficiaries" end up in a passive and token role, which severely undermines the effects, sustainability and transferability of any results.

A comprehensive youth policy must reach those hard to reach. It must build on the informal skills of the young, and connect these better to formal education, employment and entrepreneurship.

Robert Arnkil insists that to improve the youth policy landscape a new "ecology" is needed, starting with real involvement of the young, and connecting their activities to community work schemes, public services, education and the business community.

But how can this be done? Three key solutions identified by My Generation project partners:

1st lesson: The young as genuine co-creators

My Generation set out to do things differently. Participating in URBACT and My Generation made it possible to take steps in transforming youth policies and actions towards a new culture of co-creation. At every stage and in all activities My Generation asked: How are the young themselves engaging in our project? How could this be improved?

In order to foster good contact and co-creation with the young, My Generation had to transform the way workshops and meetings were run, and what kind of communication and products were made and used: they had to be active, creative and use all the senses. And there is no harm in meetings being fun, too!

2nd lesson: Transform the ecology of engagement and action

According to Robert Arnkil, why the young do not respond well to the usual type of workshops based on presentations and monologues is no big secret. Who does?

That is why, in his opinion, it is necessary to transform our entire "ecology of engagement". To be more precise, practices have to be tuned in to changes that have already occurred, which is, in fact, a natural way for people to communicate and learn.

So changing the ecology of engagement means using all channels and modalities of human communication and action: dialogue, movement, dance, music, pictures, and video.

For instance, in one of the My Generation workshops, instead of giving lectures on what young people think in a particular city, the young were given a crash course by professionals on making videos. Then the participants were assigned to go out into the streets and make creative videos of young people – what they think, how they see the city. These were fed into YouTube. In other words, the young learned useful skills (making videos, groupwork, using the Internet) and at the same time expressed themselves (and the interviewees) creatively.

3rd lesson: Transform the ecology of youth policy  

Nobody can solve complex societal challenges alone. The key is to set up sustainable polices and establish better contacts in cities between all actors in the "youth cause". That's why My Generation ran multi-actor workshops, involving young, professionals, city people, entrepreneurs and politicians.

A new tool proposed for sustainable youth policy: the youth policy cityscape

Engagement is not the only key for success. Sustainability is the second step. To achieve this, My Generation created the youth policy cityscape. The project designed this "tool" to help identify good practices in various areas of youth policy. It also serves to identify missing links, actors and practices.

Partners in the project were inspired by the experiences of certain cities with a particularly strong youth policy cityscape.
 
Rotterdam is one such example. City partners were inspired by the calibre of the young people who came forward, and by Rotterdam’s innovative ways of ensuring that the youth voice is heard. The concept of the Youth Council for example emerged as a key structure for attracting young people and providing them with influence in their city. As a result, many other My Generation cities have set up Youth Councils. The My Generation project closed in 2011, but its legacy lives on.

Read more:

• Download Arnkil.pdf (368.07 KB) (URBACT Tribune) -  PDF  
• My Generation - URBACT website
• My Generation Final Results - URBACT website