On Monday April 18 In Defence of Youth Work North East ran an event under the banner of Choose Youth. The event was attended by over 30 young people as well as youth workers, youth advocates and local councillors.

The initial session in the day focused on what young people get out of youth work and why they like it. A number of presentations were made by young people from projects within the Scotswood Area Strategy and the Durham Youth Service. Several films were shown of interviews with young people from different projects within the West End of Newcastle. The messages coming out from the films were ‘it keeps us off the streets’ , ‘learn new skills’, ‘meet new people’,’gives us a place to go’, ‘try new activities and experiences’. Project workers from North Tyneside Voluntary Organisations Development Agency did a presentation on an animation project which had enabled young people to explore the issue of self harming.

Then there were some more films about what young people feel will happen if their local youth project were to close or cut – what it has to offer? Throughout these the message was that there would be an increase in crime as young people would have nothing to do.

Then a speaker from Save our Youth Services came up and explained her involvement in campaigning against the cuts. Then some videos about Haringey were shown.

Following this young people prepared questions for the panel. This created some lively debate amongst those in attendance.

MP Ian Mearns(Labour Gateshead), Doug Nicholls(CYWU/Unite), John Niblow(Chief Executive, Northumberland Clubs for Young People) and Lizzy(Save our Youth Services) sat on the panel to answer questions from the audience. Other MP’s, councillors and representatives from the Lib Dems, Labour and Conservatives were invited to this event, but were unable to attend due to prior arrangements or they just simply didn’t respond to the invite.

The debate was lively but it was difficult to get a balance of opinion as the panel were made up of people who were against the cuts. What was clear in my opinion was that Ian Mearns came across as someone who believed in old Labour and was critical of some of the positions of Blair, Brown and Miliband. He is someone who wants to be involved in the fight against the cuts, although he does think that there needs to be some cuts but something that is done over 20-25 years.

In the last session, the young people split up into two groups to discuss ways forward. Unfortunately there wasn’t time for a a plenary. One group said they want to focus on fighting the cuts to free travel for young people in County Durham, which is a largely rural area.
The other group said they wanted to set up their own Choose Youth North East Facebook to try and co-ordinate future actions (possibly involving occupations, music). They want to meet again soon and the IDYW NE is meeting on Friday, May 13 to discuss how we can support them in doing this.

Thanks to Don for the notes.