Tag Archives: Tony Taylor

The Future of In Defence of Youth Work – steering group discussion, June 15

by Tony Taylor

 

As most readers/supporters will recognise IDYW is very much a voluntary venture.  It relies on a few souls to maintain its organisational presence on the youth work scene. Without wanting to exaggerate my significance I have reached a moment when for personal reasons, I need to withdraw from my role as the IDYW coordinator. With this in mind, the IDYW steering group is meeting on Friday, June 15 in Manchester to explore the consequences of my decision, which has not been taken lightly.

For information, you will find below my report circulated to the steering group, which will be used to open the discussion. Obviously, we will report back to you on the outcome of our musings.

My experience of being the IDYW Coordinator

In the end, I’ve failed to quantify the privilege/burden of being the IDYW Coordinator across almost a decade. In addition, a couple of previous efforts to provide something useful for our discussion in Manchester on June 15 have foundered on my indulgent guilt about letting the side down by withdrawing from the role.

Before dealing with the three main areas – the website, social media and administration – it’s important to say something about the issues of time, capacity and energy, which govern how much any person[s] can give to the role. To offer but two examples from my experience.

  • Given I no longer sell my labour I have finished up in a position, whereby almost the first thing I do every day involves IDYW – switching on the computer, going to Gmail, Facebook, checking links etc.
  • I read rapidly, voraciously and, some might say, superficially. I write laboriously and, some might say, pretentiously, giving more weight to my words than they deserve, all the while typing with one finger!

Someone else might well be much more organised, efficient and innovative, provided circumstances allow.

The IDYW website

According to the statistics, in 2017 there were 24,000 visits and 48,928 views. Significantly many visitors found their way via search engines, where IDYW is prominent, because of the level of its activity. Facebook and Twitter are also prominent in guiding people to the site. Whilst the UK boasts the most views at roughly 75%, almost 20% emanate from the USA, Australia, Ireland, Canada and Belgium.

I think this data indicates the importance of posting regularly and interestingly to the website. Hence I have seen this as a priority, but, with the above caveats in mind, this is time-consuming.

The website has never generated ongoing debate through its Comments facility.

The Social Media [Facebook and Twitter]

As of May 27, the IDYW FB page has 3,677 members. Over the years it has grown to be, I believe, the most active and wide-ranging UK youth work discussion forum. Thus I feel obliged to enter its portals more or less every day – checking for new member requests, moderating [very rarely] posts, cross-referencing with the website, picking upon links posted by members and intervening myself in discussion threads.

This last point poses a contradiction. The FB page represents our best opportunity for a continuing dialogue with our readers/supporters, yet I have chastised the Steering Group [SG] with honourable exceptions for failing to grasp this opening. However, I suspect, the FB page would survive a lack of intervention from ourselves as it has morphed increasingly into being the place to go for advice on practice, to advertise projects and jobs etc. Our dilemma is that this pluralist shift risks the forum losing its grounding in the IDYW cornerstones, especially if the website was reduced in importance.

As a matter, of course, I link all website posts to Twitter, which, as we have seen, does generate traffic, but I only visit there a couple of times a week.

General Administration

This area of responsibility has fluctuated over the years and at the meeting we should visit our attempted division of labour to see how successful it has been. Without going into detail it has confirmed my sense that we need a named person, who retains an overview of what’s going on. In the past, I think my efforts to summarise where we’ve seemed up to ahead of SG meetings have been valuable.

As things stand I’m still the first port of call via email for anyone wanting to get in touch with IDYW. To repeat this very ordinary demand leads to the daily pressure to think about IDYW.

More broadly my identification as the IDYW coordinator has led to invitations to contribute in that role at national and International gatherings, for example, the forthcoming Transformative Youth Work conference in Plymouth. So too it has meant that I’ve scribbled with this head on, both individually and collaboratively over recent years, for example, the chapter, ‘The Impact of Neoliberalism upon the Character and Purpose of English Youth Work and Beyond’, written with Paula Connaughton, Tania de St Croix, Bernard Davies and Pauline Grace, to appear shortly in the Sage Handbook of Youth Work Practice.

For the moment I’ll circulate these thoughts as a first provisional assay into our debate. I would welcome questions, criticisms.

Tony Taylor

Tony Taylor denies doing an MA in Entrepreneurial Philanthropy and being headhunted for a CEO Third Sector job

by Tony Taylor

fake

Be not disturbed! There is no basis for the rum rumour that I have embraced neoliberalism and applied to do an MA in Entrepreneurial Philanthropy after being head-hunted for the post of CEO of an unnamed leading Youth Surveillance charity. Although I’m a trifle disappointed not to be asked. This wicked whopper is the work evidently of a mole, who overheard me start a sentence, ‘neoliberalism brought remarkable technological development’ and hallucinated on the spot, thus missing the caveat, ‘yet has widened and deepened inequality’. In addition, it seems the reporting rodent got wind of a discussion at the last IDYW Steering Group meeting, within which I talked of withdrawing from my role as Coordinator. Putting 2 and 2 together the creature came up with a formula, if not for a nerve agent one that indicated I was on the verge of betraying the cause and marketing my inner soul.

Seriously though – you would hope there’s no need for such an opening cliched clause, but nowadays, who can be sure? –  there is a hint of truth in the tall tale. At our last Steering Group, we did discuss our collective capacity to keep the IDYW train on track, within which my ability to contribute was of concern. I indicated that because of, amongst other things, continuing personal pressures I was struggling to fulfil the coordinating role.

It is important to situate this ongoing dilemma in the context outlined in an IDYW statement posted in July 2016, IN DEFENCE OF YOUTH WORK: LESS A CAMPAIGN, MORE A FORUM OF CRITICAL DEBATE?  It’s well worth revisiting in full, but a few lines are pertinent to this discussion.

Our existence is haunted by contradictions and concerns. On a practical level, the IDYW show is kept on the road through the efforts of a small group of volunteers. Of course, this is neither a surprise nor a slight on those unable to be more involved. These remain difficult times. Workers, paid or unpaid, have little time on their hands. Whether disillusioned and weary or optimistic and energetic, it’s a stressful place to be. In this forbidding climate, we have failed to become the campaign group of our imagination.

On reflection, our most important contribution across our lifespan has been to provide a space, increasingly denied elsewhere, for a collective and thoughtful discussion about the state of youth work. We have sought to provide information, commentary, analysis and research to support this process. To do so is in the best tradition of a practice, which aspires to be reflective.

theory

To cut the story short the present consequence of our effort to think things through is as follows:

– as Coordinator, from now, I will only be working one day a week on a Monday for IDYW [in terms of research, maintaining the website,  commenting on FB, answering e-mails]; that there will only be one post on the IDYW website each week, ‘Sustenance for the Senses’, which will bring together links to news/information/analysis about the world of youth work and beyond.

– that, alongside this reduced commitment I’ll go at my own pace in terms of other writing I have been asked or wish to do.  If anything worthwhile comes out of this usually tortuous process I’ll put it on my blog at Critically Chatting and draw attention to its appearance on the IDYW site and Facebook.

The Steering Group is to meet on Friday, June 15 in Manchester to explore whether the above experiment in reducing expectations on the Coordinator makes any sense and to draw up a strategy for keeping IDYW alive and kicking. These meetings are always open so further details regarding the venue will be posted in good time.

Our July 2016 post ended on the following note, which retains its pertinence.

Obviously, we hope that you will be both contributor [to] and reader [of the IDYW debates], actively engaged, in the light of your own energy and resources. Whatever we deem ourselves to be, we need one another in a struggle to defend not only youth work, but a belief in a holistic education from cradle to grave, a commitment to a radical praxis and the common good. In this context IDYW still has a useful role to play.

As ever your thoughts and criticisms welcomed.

 

 

 

‘Youth Policy: Then and Now’ conference 9/10 February, Leeds… still places left

by Tony Taylor

Y&Phistory

STILL PLACES LEFT AT THIS ALWAYS STIMULATING EVENT

The Youth and Policy conference ‘Youth Policy: Then and Now’ will take place at Hinsley Hall, Leeds, 9th-10th February 2018.

This event is in place of our bi-annual ‘History of Youth and Community Work’ conference and will include presentations on contemporary as well as historical issues.

Tickets can be purchased via Eventbrite here (£190 plus Eventbrite fee)

As with the earlier gatherings, it will include a mix of plenary sessions, workshops and ‘surprise’ events. We hope that this conference will be once again a relaxed gathering of enthusiasts keen to talk to and learn from each other.

Confirmed speakers so far include:

Michael Whelan (Coventry University) – Digital Youth Work

Tony Taylor (In Defence of Youth Work) – The rise and fall of local authority youth work

Rys Farthing (Oxford University) – Inter-generational Poverty

John Goodwin (Leicester University) – The life and work of Pearl Jephcott

Matt Scott (Community Development Journal) – Community Development: Then and Now

Presenting a workshop
At the heart of our conferences are the workshops. The breadth is always impressive covering an enormous range of topics linked to the history of youth work, adult education and community work. As before some of these will focus on the historical development of practice in countries outside the UK. A feature of this conference is that around a third of those attending volunteer to deliver a workshop.

If you are attending the event and would like to present a workshop please email Paula Connaughton (p.connaughton@bolton.ac.uk) with a short description of your planned workshop (around 100 words).

Confirmed workshop topics so far include: the youth impact agenda; young Muslims and exclusion since 9/11; youth clubs 1967-2017; rethinking community development; and young people and citizenship.

Full programme available now:
Friday 9th February

10.00-11.00 Registration, Coffee and Biscuits

11.00 – 12.30 Michael Whelan (Coventry University): Does youth work have a digital future?

12.30- 14.00 Lunch

14.00 – 15.30 Rys Farthing (Oxford University) : Inter-generational poverty

15.30 – 16.00 Coffee

16.00 – 17.15 In Defence of Youth Work: Is the tide turning?

18.00 – 19.00 Evening Meal

19.00 – 20.30 John Goodwin (Leicester University): What Pearl Jephcott did next: The life and legacy of a social researcher

Saturday 10th February

09.30 – 10.45 Workshops

10.45-11.15 Coffee

11.15 -12.30 Tony Taylor (In Defence of Youth Work): The rise and fall of local authority youth services

12.30 -13.30 Lunch

13.30 – 14. 45 Matt Scott (Editor Community Development Journal) Community Development: Then and now

14.45- 16.00 Workshops

16.00 Coffee available

16.00-17.00 Panel discussion

17.00-17.15 Close and depart

 

Standing up for being counted: The Centre For Youth Impact responds to Tony Taylor’s critique

by Tony Taylor

 

Tony-Taylor-article

Photo from the March 16 conference pinched unashamedly from the CYI web site

 

A few weeks ago I linked to a piece I’d scribbled for the new look Youth & Policy – Treasuring, but not measuring: Personal and social development. I must confess to being pleased that the Centre for Youth Impact has felt moved to respond in a generous, yet inevitably critical way in a blog, jointly written by Bethia McNeil, Pippa Knott and Matt Hill, the Centre’s core team – Standing up for being counted: When treasuring is measuring, and why we might need a rethink. Within it, they seek to address the challenges found in the current dominant measurement framework and propose a rethink of the value of measurement in youth work.

The blog opens as follows:

Back in March this year, we hosted an event focused on measurement in personal and social development. We were really pleased to see Tony Taylor’s recent article in Youth and Policy, following up on the discussion, and agree that it would have been most beneficial had there been more time and space to explore the themes. Indeed, these themes are so vital that we felt moved to add our voice to Tony’s in this blog. Overall, we were struck at the many points where we agree with Tony’s forthright critique of the dominant paradigm in impact measurement, but there also remain some areas of fundamental disagreement – perhaps as might be expected in such a complex and contested area.

and comment:

We agree that it might be harder to ‘measure’ the impact of youth work than other more targeted or narrowly defined forms of work with young people – but, for us, this demands that we develop how we measure and understand what really counts about youth work, and via a process that enriches rather than undermines practice.

I hope very much you will find time to absorb their argument in full and, as they propose, join a crucial and continuing discussion.

For my part, I’d like to respond afresh, but for the moment I’m struck by the significance of the position they articulate part way through the blog.

Our stance is that measurement is a fundamentally human activity that is woven into every aspect of our lives, and which helps us make sense of the world around us.

Changing just one word in this sentence captures, at least for me, perhaps the essence of our differing perspectives.

‘Our stance is that judgement is a fundamentally human activity that is woven into every aspect of our lives, and which helps us make sense of the world around us.’

To put it another way, we make judgements all of the time in our daily lives, whilst we take measurements only when appropriate.

And the debate will certainly continue in a week’s time at The Centre for Youth Impact Gathering 2017: Shaping the future of impact measurement

taking place on 11 September 2017, 10:00 – 16:30 at Platform Islington, Hornsey Road Baths, 2 Tiltman Place, London N7 7EE.

I’m not sure if there are still places available, but visit the above link to find out. I’d love to be there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Treasuring, but not measuring: Personal and social development – Tony Taylor

by Tony Taylor

In theory, I’m about to have a quiet August, largely free from maintaining the IDYW website, responding to Facebook and twittering. Obviously, you will be devastated at the news, but never fear find below the link to the latest article on the rejuvenated Youth & Policy platform. By chance, it’s a piece of mine, something of a rant about my deep misgivings about the contemporary, neoliberal obsession with measuring the immeasurable and its insidious impact on youth work. I know it’s hardly holiday reading, but if you do get round to glancing at its sparkling prose, comments however caustic welcomed.

Treasuring, but not measuring: Personal and social development

Perplexed as usual – Ta to Justin Wyllie for photo

Tony Taylor of In Defence of Youth Work (IDYW) was invited by the Centre for Youth Impact (CYI) to debate with Paul Oginsky at a conference ‘Measure & Treasure’ held on March 16th, 2017 in London. The following is a version of what he would have said if time had allowed. It is structured around the five questions posed in advance of the conference by Bethia McNeil, the CYI’s director.

I begin:

As you might expect there are differing interpretations of what we mean by PSD, but all aspire to be holistic, to be concerned with the whole person, their values, their knowledge, their skills, their emotions and desires. Fascinatingly, from a youth work perspective, half a century ago in 1967, Bernard Davies and Alan Gibson, in repudiating the common-sense idea of an incremental adolescent journey to adult maturity, argued that the fundamental purpose of PSD should be to help young people acquire the social skills of cooperation and comradeship, to develop a commitment to the common good. In stark contrast today’s dominant version of PSD is deeply individualistic, leaning for sustenance on developmental and cognitive psychology with their behavioural impositions of stages, roles, traits and norms upon young people growing up. For my part, I remain committed to the version espoused by Davies and Gibson, later to be summed up in a 1977 Wigan Youth Service Programme of Action as ‘personal, social and political awareness’. Or, indeed, if I am mischievous, PSD is a matter of ‘consciousness’, the very mention of which poses insoluble dilemmas for those wishing to calculate its existence.

Along the way I muse:

My comment on neutrality takes me to a final point regarding the idea of character itself. The pioneers of youth work, the likes of George Williams, Lily Montagu and Baden-Powell, would warm to its re-emergence, confident in their concern to nurture young men and women of good Christian or Jewish character. Explicitly they engaged without embarrassment with two inextricably interrelated questions, which, if we are similarly honest, we cannot escape:

In what sort of society do we wish to live? What are its characteristics?
And, depending on our answer, what sort of characters, do we think, are best suited to either the maintenance of what is or the creation of something yet to be?

and

In terms of being challenged about what they’re up to, whilst researchers, workers, funders, politicians may want to stand outside of the social relations they are seeking to influence, this is impossible, if oft wilfully ignored. Being involved in the process of personal and social development is not a laboratory experiment. If you wish to measure the resilience of a young person, if you wish to make a judgement on their character, the very same measurements and judgements ought to be asked of yourself, of funders, of managers, of politicians. In my opinion, it takes some cheek for politicians, not notable for their collective honesty and integrity, to pontificate about what they see as the appropriate form of PSD for young people. The same goes for all of us. As they say, we’re all in this together. All our characters are up for grabs.

I conclude with a couple of questions:

Are you measuring how successful you have been in manufacturing an emotionally resilient young person who will put up with the slings and arrows of outrageous social policies, accept their lot, and believes there is no alternative?

Or are we evaluating how successful we have been in creating, albeit tentatively, a critical, questioning young person, who seeks to change their lot in concert with others, who continues to imagine that a fairer, juster, more democratic society is possible, that the present calamitous state of affairs is not the best that humanity can do?

 

Continuing a Conversation – Is IDYW too political, out of touch? Tony Taylor wonders.

by Tony Taylor

Find below the third part of the conversation between Colin Brent, Bernard Davies and myself, which took place a week or so ago.

 

Dear Colin and Bernard

I’ve got to admit that Colin’s comments re the overly politicised nature of the IDYW campaign have left me both perplexed and concerned.  On the one hand from the outset the campaign has been explicitly political, because the assault on youth work is political. Speaking politically is not a trend in the Campaign. It is at its heart.  This clear and open perspective has attracted a measure of support [ for example, 3,500 visits per month to the web site, over 1000 supporters on Facebook] or we wouldn’t exist five years down the line. On the one hand a strong message from some youth workers – not just academics, who might be seen also as practitioners – has been that IDYW is one of the few places where critical and political argument about policy and practice takes place.  On the other I have expressed at regular intervals my concern about my role as coordinator and by default the overwhelming contributor to the web site. Because unlike Colin’s father  my colleagues over the years, the young people with whom I have worked, have always known where I stand politically. Indeed if this was not my position I would never have drafted the original Open Letter, which launched the Campaign. Thus I have always been sensitive to the accusation that the IDYW site reflected unduly my politics. This has come up on a number of occasions, when I have suggested that I step down from my role. As to my consistent requests for alternative thoughts to be put on the site, silence largely reigns.

Forgive me for focusing on the content of the IDYW site, but Colin’s implication that we don’t listen to the field flies in the face, as I understand of it, of our series of Stories workshops, which are all about a process of supporting workers in unraveling the distinctiveness of their practice. In no sense do these workshops, as I understand it, attempt to impose a particular political line. From all accounts they have been especially rewarding. In this context it is our presence on the internet plus the Critically Engaging seminars where politics are seen to be problematically explicit. If I am being over-sensitive it is because the content of the latest seminars around ‘Outcomes’ and ‘Ethics and Politics’ has been informed by papers I have prepared and which then have appeared on the site. I presume that the many youth workers known to Colin, who baulk at the politicised tone coming from IDYW have attended the seminars, have read the papers or are put off when visiting the web site/ the Facebook page or indeed put off by the views of other colleagues, who allegedly know that IDYW is some sort of anarcho-communist conspiracy. Or if not, from whence does their suspicion steal?

As for political dogmatism I will hold my hand up personally to lapses in this regard over the years, to moments when I have been unhelpfully hasty and harsh. And I am on record as arguing that the discourse of ‘anti-oppressive and discriminatory practice’ took an authoritarian and counter-productive turn. However in the present circumstances it is not within IDYW that I locate the dogmatists. They are to be found, I would suggest, in the ranks of middle and senior management, who have closed down debate across many agencies and services. Their mantra is do it, get on with it. In their blinkered eyes there is no alternative.

Whatever our differences I don’t think we concur with their fixation upon imposed targets and outcomes. However we do need to find a way of revisiting without excluding people ‘where we are up to?’ There is a straightforward and democratic way to address this question. I suggest in all seriousness that the 2014 IDYW conference now fixed for April 10 should address the question of the Campaign’s failure to have a wider appeal and how this might be overcome. I am not taking the piss here. Some folk know that every week I am plagued by the dilemma of whether in any sense I am reflecting how at least some youth workers feel about ‘what’s going on’. Let’s get the issue out in the open.

Any road enormous thanks to Colin for opening the door to exploring the question of whether the Campaign is out of touch. It shouldn’t and cannot be brushed under the carpet.

Best as ever

Tony

 

Opening a Conversation – Is In Defence of Youth Work too political and out of touch?

by Tony Taylor

ta to resources.kesa.ca

The last week has witnessed a spontaneous exchange of e-mails between Colin Brent, Bernard Davies and myself about the state of our Campaign. As the issues emerged all of us agreed that our critical dialogue should be shared with a wider audience. Hence we have tidied up the correspondence somewhat, whilst seeking to retain its immediacy. The initial post from Colin is to be found below and in the next day will be followed by the subsequent posts. We hope you find our conversation stimulating and very much hope that you might join in. If you are so moved send your thoughts to tonymtaylor@gmail.com and he’ll put them up as distinct posts in their own right.

 

Dear Bernard and Tony,

 

Having been involved with IDYW for the last couple of years, and after several discussions with colleagues, I have decided to put together some thoughts about what I feel are trends within IDYW that are hampering our ability to both reach a wider audience and make a deeper impact.  These thoughts are meant as reflections about our current situation, and a nudge to explore how we can make the campaign more effective.

 

Firstly, I think that we need to be better at listening to youth workers on the ground and supporting them to offer the best possible provision for and with young people. I myself often find it hard to attend IDYW events, as they often clash with my work.  Is there not a better way that we can reach out and start debates then to run conferences?  I feel that the IDYW timetable often reflects the realities of academics more than face-to-face youth workers. If we fail to reach out more to practicing youth workers and listen to what they have to say rather than just criticizing the political context within which they work, then IDYW risks alienating those it is meant to supporting.  Many youth workers I know feel passionate about the value of their work, but baulk at the politicised tone coming from IDYW.  I always look to my father for inspiration on this front.  He was heavily influenced by left-wing politics, and much of his work was nourished by this.  This had significant impact on the young people he worked with and how they experienced the world.  However, not one of his colleagues or the young people was aware of his politics.

 

I recognise that politics plays a key role in how we support the values we wish to see propagated.  Politics has a very real effect both on the lives of the young people we work with and our ability to respond to their interests and needs.  There is a local election next May in area, and the future of the youth service may well depend on the result.  My issue is not the grappling with political decisions by those in power that directly affect youth work, but more with the general left-wing assumptions that prevail in IDYW. I say this although I share many of the convictions myself.  My concern comes from seeing the effect that SWP dogma had on isolating people from local campaigns during my youth.  Often these were people who had never been involved in a campaign before, fighting to save their local school field from development or against the encroachment of the mega supermarkets on their high street. Their cause was just, fighting against the power of overbearing companies, but when told they were part of a wider class war, many drifted away.  Our campaign at IDYW is surely to support open-access, voluntary association, and youth work that starts where the young people are.  We as individuals may believe that this would be easier in an egalitarian society, but many who share the core values of the campaign would not agree.

 

I guess the issue for a movement like IDYW is how to empower the core, energising them to continue with their fight, whilst attracting new people to the cause.  This can only be done if we are an open and tolerant movement that embraces the differences within.  For some reason, too few people contribute to the website.  Not enough face-to-face youth workers are on the steering group.  I myself am guilty on both counts. Somehow, I, as well as other people I have spoken to feel a need to tow a party line, that we will be attacked if we use the wrong language (can we say ‘youth services’ in a positive context? Must we always be ‘radical’ in our approaches?).  Although we are a flat organisation, many do not feel included in the movement.  I don’t feel anyone is to blame here, it is certainly not on purpose (or I hope not!).  But somehow we must ensure that IDYW reflects the open, tolerant space that we wish for young people.

 

I look forward to hearing your response to my concerns, and working together to move things forward.

 

All the best

Colin