Category Archives: Community Work

Education for Actions Week in the Durham Miners’ Hall : July 1-7

by Tony Taylor

Thanks to Jean Spence for this link to a remarkable range of thought-provoking sessions during the EDUCATION  FOR ACTIONS Gala week in Durham. Given the unexpected shift in the political atmosphere the week might well be one of great optimism that the tide is turning away from private greed towards collective need. And, we do well to remember the explicit commitment of the Community and Youth Workers Union to the men and women of the mining communities during the Great Strike of 1984/85.

 

durham miners1

 

EDUCATION FOR ACTIONS GALA WEEK ACTIVITY PROGRAMME

All meetings, unless stated otherwise will take place in the Committee Room or Main Hall (the Pitman’s Parliament), Miners’ Hall, Red Hills, Durham City. All events and activities are open to everyone and are free. The building is accessible.

 

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The Pitman’s Parliament

SATURDAY 1ST JULY – REDHILLS OPEN DAY

10:00am – 3:00pm: RED HILLS OPEN DAY (No booking required)
Come share and celebrate with us our mining heritage, in this wonderful and unique building. A wonderful opportunity to explore the ‘Pitman’s Parliament’ and beautiful grounds. Guided tours by heritage experts: These will take place at: 10:30am; 12:00pm; and 1:30pm. There will also be an Exhibition of children’s work from Great Lumley Juniors’ School exploring their mining heritage.
Refreshments (Tea, coffee, biscuits, scones, etc.) will be available for a small donation.
For further information or to book a bespoke guided tour contact: education4action@durhamminers.co.uk.

MONDAY 3rd JULY – EDUCATION 4 ACTION

10:00am – 3:00pm: RED HILLS SCHOOLS VISIT
A day long education and arts workshop, working with a local secondary school exploring history, politics, music, trade unions, mining communities and heritage. For further information or if your school is interested in attending or arranging a visit please contact: education4action@durhamminers.co.uk

TUESDAY 4TH JULY – HERITAGE DAY

1:30pm – 3:00pm: THE WORKERS EDUCATION ASSOCIATION: HISTORY & HERITAGE BRANCH
A tour of the building will be followed by a presentation by Kath Connelly on the work of Education 4 Action, followed by a meeting to formalise the constitution of the WEA History & Heritage Branch.
(Committee Room)

3:00pm – 5:00pm: FILM SCREENING: ASUNDER
A film by Esther Johnson. Using archive and contemporary footage and audio, Asunder collages the stories of people from Tyneside and Wearside to uncover just what life was like on the home front, with bombs falling on Britain for the first time, conscientious objectors sentenced to death, and women working as doctors, tram conductors and footballer. The narrative moves from and Edwardian golden era, in which sport grew in popularity and aircraft and cars pointed to a bright new future, to a war that horrifically reversed this progress. In the battle of the Somme, British, French and German armies fought one of the most traumatic battles in military history. Over the course of just four months, more than one million soldiers were captured, wounded or killed in a confrontation of unimaginable horror. (Main Hall)

6:00pm – 7:00 pm. There will be a tour of the building followed by:
The NORTH EAST LABOUR HISTORY SOCIETY Presents:
MICHAEL CHAPLIN: SID CHAPLIN’S DURHAM: A VOYAGE AROUND MY FATHER’
Last year Michael edited a new collection of Sid’s poems, short stories and essays written in the 1940’s when he was a pitman at Dean and Chapter in Ferryhill. It was published in the autumn to mark his birth centenary. Born in County Durham Michael Chaplin is a theatre, radio, television and non-fiction writer and former television producer and executive. (Committee Room)

WEDNESDAY 5th JULY – EDUCATION 4 ACTION

 

10:00am – 3:00pm: RED HILLS SCHOOLS VISIT
A day long education and arts workshop, working with a local primary school exploring history, politics, music, trade unions, mining communities and heritage. For further information or if your school is interested in attending or arranging a visit please contact: education4action@durhamminers.co.uk

THURSDAY 6th JULY – STRIKES, PROTESTS & SOLIDARITY

Join us from 5pm, for evening of literature, music, talks, film and poetry

5:00pm – 6:00pm: BOOK LAUNCH – JUSTICE DENIED: FRIENDS, FOES AND THE MINERS’ STRIKE
This is a timely book written by former miners and radical academic researchers, the majority of whom were participants in the 1984-85 miners’ strike in Britain. It is particularly welcome today as calls intensify, despite the attempts by the establishment to silence them, for a public enquiry into the policing of picketing at Orgreave. Not only is it a marvellous account of the bravery of the men and women and their allies during one of the longest industrial strikes in British history, it is also testimony to the resilience of mining communities in the face of state repression. (Committee Room)

6:00pm – 7:00pm: PIT CAMPS
Flis Callow and Caroline Poland, who were active in Sheffield Women Against Pit Closures in 1984/85, and in the 1992/93 struggle to keep the pits open after Heseltine’s announcement to close 31 more pits, will present and share their experiences of the Houghton Main Pit Camp in 1993. They are currently gathering archive material and stories about Houghton Main Pit Camp in Yorkshire, as well as the other 6 pit camps set up in 1993. This is a little known story they hope to tell in a book written in conjunction with Gary Rivett and Sheffield University’s ‘History of Activism’ project. They will be interested to hear from anyone involved in any of the other pit camps. (Main Hall)

7:00 – 7.30pm: THE NORTH EAST SOCIALIST SINGERS
Hailing from all over the region, the community singers will perform a range of songs, drawing on our region’s rich mining heritage and socio-political history. Expect songs of protest, freedom and solidarity. You are most welcome to join in. (Main Hall)

7:30pm – 9.30pm: MINING THE MEMORIES
The ‘Mining the Memories’ project supported ex-miners and former colliery community members in South Yorkshire to write and produced a series of short films which tell their stories of the 1984/85 miners strikes and the continued legacy the decline in the coal mining industry is having on their communities. In total 5 original short dramas, 1 original animation and 2 documentaries. One documentary focuses on the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign and their continued fight for justice, the other focuses on Goldthorpe, South Yorkshire. (Main Hall)

FRIDAY 7th JULY – POVERTY IS POLITICAL

Join us from 2pm as we explore Red Hills. Followed by an evening of talks, film and lecture exploring issues surrounding one of the most prevalent problems in our society today; inequality. Food and refreshments will be available.

4:30pm – 5:30pm: HUNGER PAINS
Author Kayleigh Garthwaite volunteered with a Teesside food bank for two years, a time which inspired her acclaimed book ‘Hunger Pains’. Kayleigh shall share her work and research exploring food bank culture and poverty within austerity Britain. You are invited to share your thoughts and experiences.
Kayleigh spent two years volunteering in a foodbank in Stockton on Tees as part of a bigger project which looked at health inequalities brought about by the huge cuts in state spending through the Government’s austerity programme. Kayleigh provides a powerful insight into the realities of foodbanks. Trussell Trust data shows that 87,693 people including 35,246 children received three day emergency food from the Trussell Trust foodbanks in the North East of England 2014-2015. 13 million people live in poverty in Britain and over half of these are working families and in a town where a boy born in one of the poorest parts of Stockton can expect to live to just 67, a boy growing up just two miles down the road in Eaglescliffe or Hartburn would expect to live to 84. (Main Hall)

5:30pm – 6:30pm: THE DAVY HOPPER MEMORIAL LECTURE. SPEAKER: KEN LOACH
Education 4 Action presents ‘The Davey Hopper Memorial Lecture’ featuring Ken Loach, acclaimed film director and social commentator, director of ‘I Daniel Blake’, ‘Bread and Roses’, ‘Land and Freedom’ and many more. (Main Hall)

6:30pm – 7pm. THE FORGOTTEN WORKERS: LOW PAID WORK AND MULTIPLE EMPLOYMENT
Dr Jo McBride (Newcastle University) and Dr Andrew Smith (Bradford University) will talk about their concerns relating to low-paid work, wage inequalities, the rise of unstable jobs and in-work poverty. Whilst successive UK governments have attempted to reduce unemployment and make work pay, viewing employment as the best route out of poverty/low-pay, there has been a rise in what is termed ‘precarious work’. We have termed these people the ‘Forgotten Workers’ as they are largely absent from official statistics and policy debates. This is the first ever study in the UK to explicitly focus on low-paid workers in more than one job and to examine their work experiences and work-life challenges. We have discovered issues concerning underemployment, intensification of work, extensification of work, challenges and complexities of juggling work and home, issues with zero hours contracts and the well being of people struggling with more than one job. (Main Hall)

7:30pm: FILM SCREENING – THE SPIRIT OF 45
Ken Loach’s impassioned documentary, tells of how the spirit of unity buoyed Britain during the war years, and carried through to create a vision of a fairer, united society. This session will take place in the (Main Hall)

For more information about the Friends of the Durham Miners’ Gala, please visit our website: www.friendsofdurhamminersgala.org

How did the left radicalism of my Manchester youth give way to Islamism?Kenin Malik ponders.

by Tony Taylor

black star

Back in 2013 we drew your attention to the appearance of a fascinating book, ‘Black Star: Britain’s Asian Youth Movements’, written by Anandi Ramamurthy.  At the time Gus John wrote, ‘we can only hope that young people and their parents, of whatever ethnicity, demand this book is included in the school and college curriculum. It shows that even before the ‘war on terror’ and Islamophobia, South Asian communities needed to engage in a defensive war in the face of a neo-fascist and state terror that was relentlessly visited upon them.’  A later review by Matloub Husayn-Ali-Khan, who was personally involved, underlined the significant role of youth workers in the emergence of the Sheffield Asian Youth Movement, which was initially called the Asian Youth Council. It was born out of a meeting on October 12, 1980 between Bradford and Sheffield activists held at the Attercliffe Youth Centre in Sheffield. He recalls, ‘an atmosphere that brought out a feeling of togetherness, commitment, comradeship; oneness and unity between all those who felt the struggle.’

AYM Sheffield

With the Manchester tragedy very much to the fore in many people’s minds this historical context is revisited by Kenin Malik in ‘How did the left radicalism of my Manchester youth give way to Islamism?’ — After the atrocity, we recall a past when to be young and Muslim was to be engaged in class politics’

To take, but one aspect of his argument, he remembers his ‘real fury at a society that would not embrace [him] as an equal, legitimate citizen. But it was a very different kind of anger to that which many young Muslims feel now and the ways of expressing it were even more distinct. My fury towards Britain was not expressed through the prism of being “Muslim”. Partly this was because I was not religious. But partly, also, because few adopted “Muslim” as a public identity. We thought of ourselves as “Asian” or “black”, but these were political, not ethnic or cultural labels.’

He concludes,

Perhaps the question to ask is not: “Were I 20 today, would I be attracted to Islamism?” but, rather: “Had Salman Abedi or Mohammad Sidique Khan been born a generation earlier, would they have rejected Islamism?” It is impossible to answer, but in asking that question, we can begin to tease out some of the social reasons for the Abedis and the Khans of this world becoming as they are.

I am not suggesting that anyone apart from Salman Abedi (and his co-conspirators, if there are any) bears responsibility for the carnage at the Manchester Arena. The reflex response to anyone digging deeper into the motives of jihadis is to denounce them as “apologists”. Witness the Tory onslaught against Jeremy Corbyn for what was a largely innocuous speech on Friday. What I am saying, however, is that while individuals bear responsibility for their acts, they also act within particular social contexts. If we are serious about combating the scourge of homegrown jihadism, we need not just to denounce jihadis as evil, but also to look at how the shifting social landscape has given them space to act as they do – and at how we can remake that landscape.

How might youth work contribute to such a remaking? As a minimum aren’t we obliged to engage afresh with the politics of our work? Whose political agendas have we been embracing in the era of neoliberalism? Is there the possibility of turning at least some of this world upside down?

 

Spring is in the air with a new edition of CONCEPT

by Tony Taylor

Our friends at CONCEPT inform us that the Spring edition is now online at http://concept.lib.ed.ac.uk/Concept/. Always worth exploring.

Vol 8, No 1 (2017): Spring
Table of Contents
Articles
Feminism: A Fourth to be Reckoned With? Reviving Community Education Feminist Pedagogies in a Digital Age by Mel Aitken

Vulnerable Practice: Why We Need Honest Conversations To Make Change  by Nicky Bolland

The Challenges of Community Planning for the Community and Voluntary Sector in the Current Climate: A Road Well Travelled? by Mae Shaw

Youth And Community Based Approaches to Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls: Reflections from India by Marjorie Mayo, Deboshree Mohanta

On The Block: The Fairer Scotland Action Plan and Democracy  by Jim Crowther

Poetry

Poem: United Colours of Cumnock by Jim Monaghan

Reviews

Review: Peter McLaren, (2015) Pedagogy of Insurrection by Juha Suoranta

Review: William Davies, (2016) The Happiness Industry by Christina McMellon

MMU BA Y&C course under threat! Advice and support appreciated.

by Tony Taylor

The BA [Honours] Youth and Community course at the Manchester Metropolitan University is facing a precarious future. Against this worrying backcloth Janet Batsleer, Reader in Education and Principal Lecturer, Youth and Community, writes to ask our readers the following question.

What would you design into a Community Education course for the future that builds on the learning of the past 40 years or so? Or would you just close it down?

Your replies should be sent to Janet at J.Batsleer@mmu.ac.uk and would be much appreciated.

 

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Tony Taylor, Jon Ord and Janet Batsleer at the IDYW conference

 

These are indeed troubled times.

Brighton Campaign Protect Youth Services video

by Tony Taylor

As the campaign nears its climax a measured video narrated by Adam Muirhead, which steers clear of simply using the preventative argument. Adam will be contributing to our national conference on March 17.

FEB 23 PYS Protest – Budget Council Meeting 

Hove Town Hall
Norton Road, BN3 2 Hove – 16:00–18:00

Brighton and Hove Council make their final decision about the cuts to the youth service budget at this meeting. This is our final bid to fight for young people’s services – let’s make it a big event. Please join us, share the event and spread the word. Bring your banners and voices – Protect Youth Services!

Another Great CONCEPT, Winter 2016

by Tony Taylor

concept

Our usual cordial welcome to the latest winter issue of CONCEPT, the Journal of Contemporary Community Education Practice Theory, packed as usual with interesting stuff. At this point I’ve only read Allan Clyne’s fascinating piece on the foundational relationship of Christianity to youth work. I can feel a reply coming on!

Vol 7, No 3 (2016): Winter 2016
Table of Contents

ARTICLES

A Genealogy of Youth Work’s Languages: Founders
Allan Clyne

Austere Lives: Marginalised Women Gaining a ‘Voice’ in the Former Durham Coalfields
Jo Forester

Possibilities of a Community Centred Pedagogy: A Snapshot of a Reading Project in Cape Town
Salma Ismail

Easter Rising Dublin 1916: Learning the Legacy of a Revolutionary Moment as a Subjugated Discourse in Scotland
John Player

Political Education in Scotland: A Practitioner’s Perspective
Neil Saddington

REVIEWS

Review: The Stigma of Poverty: Challenges, Interventions and Possibilities 29 September 2016
Luke Campbell

Book Review: Leona M. English and Catherine J. Irving (2015), Feminism in Community: Adult Education for Transformation
Bríd Connolly

Book Review: Akwugo Emejulu, (2015) Community Development As Micropolitics: Comparing Theories, Policies and Politics
Gary Craig

Book Review: Carol Roy (2016) Documentary Film Festivals: Transformative Learning, Community Building and Solidarity PDF
Kirsten MacLean

 

 

Renewing Collective Purpose : The D2N2 Youth Work Alliance

by Tony Taylor

Further to yesterday’s piece celebrating Nottinghamshire’s defence of open youth work, find below a report on the launch of a Derbyshire/Nottinghamshire Youth Work Alliance, which outlines powerfully its collective sense of purpose and identity.

Is this a useful template for others in the struggle to renew a tradition of cooperation and solidarity within our work? It would be interesting to hear the views of the youth work trade unions and the Institute for Youth Work. I believe the D2N2 Alliance is making a contribution to the Unite national conference in Eastbourne on Saturday, November 19. My own initial response is that we should encourage further serious discussion about the wider possibilities of this important development.

 

d2n2

LAUNCH

D2N2 Youth Work Alliance is a forum of professional Youth and Community Workers who contribute to the support and development of young people in Derby, Derbyshire, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire. The methods, approaches, values and principles are in line with those set out through academic and evidence based practice.

 
On the 15th October 2016 we held the Launch event at Derby University, the programme of workshops was developed and facilitated by a group of young people to over 70 attendees, including Youth Workers from both Statutory, Third and Voluntary Sector Organisations and Elected Members.

 
The three workshops (Youth Work Past, Youth Work Present & Youth Work Future) led to plenary session to ratify the Alliance’s future programme of work;

 
PURPOSE:

  • To promote and youth work as a distinct and effective educational approach to engaging and intervening with young people.
  • To encourage the growth of open access youth work outside of the school day and targeted Youth Work with small group or individuals.
  • To positively influence the professional training and development of both Youth Workers and Youth Support Workers.
  • To advise on the quality assurance and inspection of youth work practice across Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire.
  • To promote of cross border cooperation and efficiencies on aspects of youth work including; policy & practice, curriculum, quality assurance and workforce development.

Eligibility for Membership of the Alliance is set out below.

This is to maintain the professional status of Youth and Community Workers. Membership recognises the diversity of the youth work sector; hence includes those that work with young people, who engage on a voluntary basis, in public, private and third sector (including faith-based) organisations. The work may be paid or unpaid and includes face-to-face workers, youth work managers and educators. It recognises those practitioners that may have an interest in community development, with young people at the heart of their interests. All members must subscribe to the Code of Ethics.

 

Membership is open to anyone who;

  • Holds an enhanced DBS check
  • Contributes to the development of young people in Derby, Derbyshire, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire.
  • Supports and does not contravene the code of principles and ethics of professional youth and community work.

Membership will include the following benefits:

  • Quarterly forum meetings to discuss current issues, debates and professional practice
  • A forum to raise issues, concerns or challenges that require challenge in decision making arenas
  • Membership of a collective voice which enables collective action for social change in the interest of young people and their communities
  • Ability to contribute to maintain the professional standards of youth and community work
  • Invitation to free CPD events
  • An online portal to share news within the field, opportunities, best practice and resources for effective youth and community work.

Fees: This is free

 

D2N2YWA believes that Youth work enables young people to develop holistically, working with them to facilitate their personal, social and educational development, to enable them to develop their voice, influence and place in society and to reach their full potential. It is characterised by:

  • Positive relationships based on mutual respect.
  • An informal educational process starting from their current unique experience based on voluntary participation, harnessing the unique learning opportunities of working in groups.
  • Planned opportunities, activities, experiences and interventions based on an informal curriculum, co-created through the young person and the professional.
  • Providing information, advice, support and guidance on the many complex needs young people face, in all areas of their lives.
  • Preparing young people to make a positive contribution to society in adult life, based on the principles of empathy, equality and social justice.
  • A diverse professional sector with a clear value base and National Occupational Standards to support young people through their adolescent phase of life.

Whilst youth work skills are applied in a variety of settings and contexts, which are welcomed, youth work is not:

  • Formal vocational or academic education or training.
  • Social control directed by outcomes driven by social care, education or youth justice professionals.