Talk about false promises, best laid plans, I’m about to start penning the reports of this weekend’s events, but there will be no photos, courtesy of my camera. It remained resolutely shuttered in my bag. Nevertheless in the next few days I will post reflections on our In Defence conference in Sheffield, the Y&P History Conference in Barnsley and the Launch of our This is Youth Work book/DVD at the Portcullis House in London. However Jean Spence might well have come to the rescue in terms of images at the Y&P gathering. She was clicking away merrily!
In the meantime I’ve moved to here Lenny’s questioning initial comments on our IDYW conference at the Wybourn Centre, where he works.
Referring to the AVANTI cartoon in the previous post he begins:
I just noticed the bloke on the horse hasn’t got any kecks on! Does this symbolise a rough ride for youth work? It was good to see familiar and new faces at the conference and was I very pleased that our poor old “youthie” served the purpose of our meeting. I’ve sent the following rant via email (as a response to someone else’s comments about the conference) but thought I should post it on here too when I saw your comment about the lack of feedback on the site.
I missed a fair bit of the chat because I was slaving over a hot stove. I did, however, pick up some fresh perspectives – even if they were saying the same thing. It’s always nice to know we’re not alone but I’m getting increasingly uncomfortable about being a consistent and significant minority.
I’m still pursuing this notion that PURE youth work has no right to exist under the current conditions. We’re like someone who’s just been voted off the X-Factor DEMANDING to be famous. We stand on the stage looking bewildered, stomping our feet and screaming at Simon Effing Cowell “But my mate Eric reckons I’m the new northern Sinatra!!” But he just stares down and admires his brand new shirt, hand-made from buffed puppy skin and shouts “NEXT!”
We’ve tried to rationalise the nature and value of our craft for decades (not me personally, I’m obviously far too young) and look where it’s got us. The most frustrating aspect of defending the values of youth work is that we seem to be doing it in conflict with other youth workers.
(“Well stop whinging and get another job!!”)
So why then is it so difficult just to roll-over and die? I mean, my own personal campaign for “real” youth work has been active for at least 12 years and I feel just as despondent now as I did back then – maybe more so. Why don’t I just embrace the new order of bureaucratised, corporate youth work and cut my losses? The answer (for me) is that when you’ve “done” youth work properly and seen how effectively it can work then it becomes very, very difficult to let go of it. And even more difficult to accept something that doesn’t work in its place.
It ain’t easy though, to keep standing up after you’ve been knocked down, time and time and time again. And we get beaten from every angle don’t we? The bureaucrats want us to give them something to count; funders want complex business plans; government want us to be an effective careers service – getting kids work-ready for jobs that don’t exist. And it comes to something when the Mayor of Barnsley puts you on her “hit list”! (all I did was make her a teeny bit accountable). Let’s face it, we just aren’t taken seriously. If we get too professionalised we lose the essence of our work and if we’re too informal we just become a laughable liability. I’m reminded of the old B.B. King lyric, “Nobody loves me except my Mother but she could be jiving too.”
Mother: “…he’s a youth worker.”
Neighbour: “Has he always done that?”
Mother: “No, he used to have a proper job.”
It ain’t easy. People either detest and fear you because they think you’re a social worker or undervalue you because they think you’re a Butlins redcoat. We are an entirely misunderstood breed. One of the funniest examples I’ve witnessed of how people view youth work was a few years ago when I’d asked our organisation’s finance officer to look at the budget on a funding proposal. He stroked his chin and said dryly “That’s a lot o’ cash just for pissin’ abart wi kids!” But he seriously, seriously meant it. (Although in our defence he couldn’t even add up properly).
I think (in my current state of disillusionment) that a large percentage of people involved in youth work services prefer the incumbent culture of pre-determined outputs and formalised methodology and I think they prefer it because…
(a) it’s often safer and easier to work to a set structure
(b) the language of our campaign sounds like scary, left-wing extremist political sloganeering
(c) it’s the way of the world
(d) All of the above
And I think this is one of our biggest drawbacks to gaining recognition. We’re not even split down the middle, we’re split somewhere over to the far left hand side.
So today, I surrender… but tomorrow, I’m sure I’ll be back for more bruises. Talk about boxers having cauliflower ears, I’m surprised I haven’t got a cauliflower arse!
Lenny
(God’s Lonely Youthworker)
IN DEFENCE OF YOUTH WORK 
To quote the above “So why then is it so difficult just to roll-over and die? I mean, my own personal campaign for “real” youth work has been active for at least 12 years and I feel just as despondent now as I did back then – maybe more so. Why don’t I just embrace the new order of bureaucratised, corporate youth work and cut my losses? The answer (for me) is that when you’ve “done” youth work properly and seen how effectively it can work then it becomes very, very difficult to let go of it. And even more difficult to accept something that doesn’t work in its place.It ain’t easy though, to keep standing up after you’ve been knocked down, time and time and time again. And we get beaten from every angle don’t we?”.
I don’t know if if I’m running along the same vein, I worked as a youth worker and a manager for 21 years in the same town, arguing the principles & values of youth work. My last few years a battle not only against bureaucrats but increasingly against the organisation I worked for and the knocks I got became more and more difficult. Arguing againgst HR who deemed ‘democratic youth work’, ‘playwork’ and ‘targeted youthwork’ in a redundancy scenario as being comparible in one case but not another (a long story)…..but my fight was finally lost in a restructure of management & a play worker now manages the youth work team. Almost 7 months on I find it hard to roll over and difficult to let go despite being made redundant, especially when I hear whats happening locally. Many a tear shed, yet I will continue to fight the cause.
Yes, we seem to be travelling to a mutual destination from a shared experience. We both seem to be reluctant to forfeit logic in favour of appeasing the clueless bean-counters that shape our society to suit the wealthy. Youth work is a process that creates opportunity for the people who lack it and “opportunity” is a difficult thing to measure. We could only stand a chance if the bureaucrats admit their inability to explore the value of any principles beyond supporting the interests of capitalist class. The essence of what we achieve has always been lost in translation between youth worker and bureaucrat.
Maybe this is part of a broader and deeper social trend, along with the castration of the trade unions and the hindrance of peaceful protest by the powers – to suppress any form of critical pedagogy.