I don’t know whether anyone else feels like this but the second young people are in the full glare of the media for inexplicable acts of violence, I start to feel my liberal heart beat a bit faster. I like to think I know young people and that, on the balance of probability, they wouldn’t – generally – do anything so terrible as loot, burn and destroy everything in their sight. Would they?
Yes. They would. They have.
I begin to calculate my defence of these young people. I prepare what I’m going to say that will contextualize their behaviour, at least. I struggle with this –everything clogging up the words in my throat before they have fully formed.
I have spent a career - a life choice I have been happy to make – working with young people, many of them disaffected. The truth is, I have chosen to work with young people because I passionately believe in investing time and effort in the next generation. Because it’s worth it. Because they are the future. My work has paid me back a thousand fold in job satisfaction and in not just feeling but in evidenced certainty that the work done does make a tangible, real difference. I have seen young people go from angry to engaged, from downhearted to upbeat. I have seen a little light switched on. Not always, but often, engaging in arts projects of one kind or another has given young people an opportunity to shine., to feel heard, to feel like someone somewhere cares about what they might want to say.
But here – the riots - was something different. Here was something akin to lawlessness, a group of young people running amok as if life had not meaning at all. As if, the police don’t matter, or the law and order is nothing, as if politician and community leaders are dust and as if being caught or not being caught was utterly irrelevant. What did it mean? How could I read it? Could I justify it sociologically or some other way? How could I defend the indefensible?
It was at that point , I suppose, that the raw human reaction took over. It was a terribly uncomfortable place to be – outraged of Rossendale momentarily and then just as certain that young people – even these young people, need people still to believe that they are worth trying to save. I found myself hiding from the social media too, even abandoning my Facebook page after coming unstuck when some accused me of ‘unilateral’ views because I kept banging on about society and context and the fact that young people don’t operate in a vacuum. What are they supposed to do when MPs steal? When journalists can’t be trusted, when those in authority telling them to behave better can’t behave themselves? When the entire society is built on endless consumption, the pointless acquisition of things?
“Condemn the act,” I kept saying, “Don’t condemn the young people.” And yet on it went. Many people I know, love and care about – even some in my own family wanted to flog, or string up young people. The irony of the violence of the reaction was not lost on me. I was dis-comforted by my own sense of outrage and that my friends and colleagues were calling for these young people’s heads.
And therein lies the problem. It’s not binary. Beyond the acts of violence it is not simply a matter of right and wrong. Young people are complex – like anyone. And context is everything.
Against this, at Burnley Youth Theatre, we work with a range of young people who are dedicated, interested and completely committed to delivering amazing work that represents a different picture. You could suggest that the young people we are working with are a completely different cohort– middle class, engaged, supported by parents and with present fathers – and of course, you would be wrong. Our young people are entirely representative of young people everywhere – they are a cross section of society. Some have little. Some have a lot. Some live with grandparents and some in children’s homes. Some have experienced violence and some struggle with basic literacy. Some are likely to go to Oxbridge. Some are young carers and some are young people with a criminal record. Some have special needs and some do not. Some are wheel chair users, and some come to us without a decent meal inside them. Some have parents with grave difficulties of one kind or another. Others are the antithesis of this – they have some or all of the privileges that life offers.
And another point that’s worth making. Not all of our young people are perfect. They some times behave badly. They some times make mistakes. But we don’t give up on them.
The point? It would be very easy to get carried away and make all sorts of knee jerk responses that punished – as should be the case – the act, but abandons the young person in the process. If we want young people to be engaged, then we have to invest in them. We have to develop a means of engaging them fully in the world; a difficult proposition when funds are being cut but no investment in young people is not an option. And investment is not just about money.
To finish, an apocryphal story:
A man is standing on the beach. All around his feet are starfish, hundreds and hundreds of starfish that will die if they are not in the sea. He leans down, picks up a starfish and throws it back into the sea. Each new wave brings more starfish to the shore. And each time he just carries on, leaning down, picking up starfish and throwing them back.
A passerby walks towards him and asks, “What are you doing?”
“I’m picking up the starfish, and throwing them back.” He says.
The passerby shrugs, says, “That’s ridiculous. You’ll never throw them all back. You’ll never save them all.”
“No,” the man says, “No. But I’ll save some of them.”
