Minutes of meetings are hardly anybody’s idea of a riveting read. However, we’d be grateful if you could give the following notes of our last Steering Group meeting a quick glance. And to say that anyone interested in giving some time to our endeavours is encouraged to get in touch. We are in no sense a closed group – the more voices, the better.

Present: Malcolm Ball, Bernard Davies, John Grace, Pauline Grace, Naomi Thompson, Tony Taylor and, via SKYPE with differing levels of success, Colin Brent, Paula Connaughton and Tania de St Croix.

Apologies: ;Susan Atkins, Paul Hogan, Kevin Jones, Diane Law

The primary purpose of the meeting was to explore and agree on a fresh way of organising the work of IDYW. taking into account the publicised shift to being first and foremost a forum catalysing critical discussion and the need to move beyond there being a single, leading IDYW Coordinator. In seeking to do so and in the light of recent discussions about blurring the boundaries of what constitutes youth work the Steering Group confirmed its commitment to defending the distinctiveness of youth work as expressed in the IDYW cornerstones of practice.

After much discussion the following was agreed:

TASKS and Lead Person[s]

Maintaining website/blog, Facebook and Twitter plus encouraging participation etc. – Tony Taylor
Developing European links and relationships – Malcolm Ball, Colin Brent, Pauline Grace
Coordinating Story-Telling Workshops – Bernard Davies
Maintaining Story-Telling website and resource – Colin Brent
Admin support for seminars/conferences/events – Rachel via Youth Association South Yorkshire [YASY]
IDYW Accounts – Heather via YASY
Monitoring possible Research opportunities – Naomi Thompson
Annual Conference arrangements – Malcolm Ball
Encouraging regional and local IDYW networks/meetings – Colin Brent
Encouraging national and regional IDYW seminars – Tania de St Croix
Monitoring possible contributions to external conferences/events/publications – Tony Taylor
Linking/relating to National Youth Agency/Education,Training Standards Committee – Sue Atkins
Linking/relating to Institute of Youth Work – Pauline Grace
Linking/relating to ChooseYouth – Malcolm Ball
Linking/relating to Centre for Youth Impact – Tania de St Croix
Linking/relating to Training Agencies Group and Youth & Policy – Paula Connaughton
Acting as secretary to SG meetings – to be rotated

Further bits and pieces of interest:

Pauline informed us of a conference in Lithuania to launch the Academic Journal of Open Youth Work. In the event a workshop on neoliberalism’s impact on English youth work was run by Tony Taylor, Pauline Grace and Malcolm Ball. A further post will offer further details, including a link to the on-line journal.
On the Story-Telling front we ran a workshop in Carlow on December 9 with work underway to organise possible events in Cardiff, Huddersfield and Manchester. Look out for the workshop flyer.
As you can see above, we agreed to change the logo to freshen up our image eight years on from our birth. Many thanks to Peter Griffiths at http://www.peter-griffiths.com/ for the design.
In terms of the 2018 national conference we agreed to check if Y&P is holding its History conference next year and if so, to hold our conference in tandem. In past years the event in Leeds has attracted a positive mix of students and workers with a sprinkling of academics. More immediately the 2017 national conference is to be held on Friday, March 17, almost certainly in Birmingham. More info in the next few days.

Date of next meeting: February 10