Hey Everyone! We’re taking a different approach this month. We’ve found two folks, one city-based and one rural-based, and asked them all about youth culture in their area. So, why not join us as we chat to Matthew and Lou?!
For the full conversation, listen to the podcast. Conversation may have been redacted for simplicity in the written format.
1)Introduce yourselves! Tell us a bit about where you live and what it’s like.
Matthew: I live in Glasgow and I do youthwork in areas of deprivation. Glasgow is huge, I live kind of in the East End, very near Celtic park.
The whole of Glasgow is wee communities everywhere, but big buildings everywhere as well, so it’s kind of overwhelming – but I love Glasgow. Where I live is what used to be a housing estate, but now it’s a scheme. There’s lots of areas [in Glasgow] and lots of young people cutting about but yeah, I love Glasgow. Glasgow is great.
Lou: I used to have the privilege of working on the team with Hannah and Beth at Youth for Christ. I live in Shropshire which, before I moved there about 10 years ago, I didn’t have a clue even existed. It’s in the West Midlands, right on the border of Wales, and I moved up from the south, so lots of my youth work practice has been done in the South and more urban areas too.
But since moving to Shropshire, which is a very rural place, I’ve done all sorts of other roles as well as working for Youth for Christ and working in the rural communities up here.
2)What drew you to your area? Why do you like living there?
Matthew: I’m from Aberdeen originally. Aberdeen is a big city, but I always wanted to live in a bigger place. I’m Scottish and people kind of say Glasgow is like the Scottish city, if you’re going between Glasgow and Edinburgh. So, I always saw Glasgow as the place to be like, ‘oh I’ve always wanted to live there’.
What do I love about living here? I think it’s the people. They say the people of Glasgow are just the friendliest people you’ll ever meet; they’ll chat to you in the street. They’re honest but they’re lovely.
I think that’s what drew me to living here as well – the sort of people you get in Glasgow and how you’re able to chat to anyone in the street, young or old, and they’ll just have a chat with you for a while. I think that’s kind of why I love it here – and that’s what I really like about Glasgow.
Lou: As I said, I moved up from the South and I was literally living on the M25 – I could see it from my house. It was really busy and there was lots of traffic. We had a young family at the time and decided that we needed to make some changes with our life, and so we made the move up to Shropshire for our family really; to improve family life. And we absolutely love it up here. It’s very different to the south, but we love it because there’s a quality of life and especially because there’s just so much connection with the outdoors – like I can get to Snowdonia within the hour, I’ve got hills on my doorstep and there’s that sense of being outside and connection with things.
Like Matthew, what I really noticed was just like how chatty and willing to have conversation people were up here compared to where I was down south. But yeah, absolutely love it.
3)If you had to describe the characteristics of young people in your area in 5 words, what would you say?
Lou: The thing is, I can’t do this in five words. Can I also just say something first? I think that young people in all different contexts are going through really similar things everywhere.
I think there’s a sense of young people being inquisitive and really willing to question. So that’s number one. I also think simplicity, but I don’t mean it in a rude way. Because of our connection with nature here, there’s a simplicity and a slowness.
Then I’m going to use the word sensitivity. I’ve seen that there is a sensitivity to outside influences in a good way, but also in a negative way. I’m also going to use the world helpfulness, which I’ll pick up on later.
Matthew: I think it’s interesting Lou, you’re saying you think young people are very similar and I think you’re right. Some of the words I’ve got in my brain are the same or similar.
The first thing I had is that they’re not shy. They will just as much as the adults come up to you in the street. Like there’s no stopping young people. So that’s one.
One that’s two words – really aware. They know what’s going on in their family’s lives – they’re self aware as well. They’re really aware of what their life scenarios are like, either through their parents or through what’s going on. I think young people are really aware. Another word I had was curious. I think they’re searching for something. They’ll ask you anything.
So I’ve had not shy, curious, aware and honest. And my last one would be that they’re relational people. Young people today are more relational than I was as a young person. I was really awkward and shy.
4)Where do you see young people spending time in your area; what do they do with their time?
Matthew: I feel like it’s almost different questions: Where am I engaging with them? Where’s the youth work going on? And where are young people hanging out?
I do a lot of my work in schools; giving young people a space outside of their classes to sort of reflect. It’s about giving space away from the intensity of education or if they’re disengaged.
Around where I live, I see young people hanging about the shopping centre all the time, and then if they’re not there, they’re going over on a bus in a town or there’s a wee sort of lake. But they’ve kind of got nothing to do besides that, outside of school, so they are kind of just hanging about, wandering and, particularly in the areas that would be seen as more deprived, they’re more likely to be out and about, around the blocks of flats just hanging around like that.
Hannah/Beth: Yeah, we live in a town and one of the places that young people congregate is around the town’s bus station.
Lou: One of the things for us being rural is that there’s a real lack of provision across everything – but especially for young people. You know, one of my things is going to be, that there’s not much happening for young people, so they’re just hanging about, but that’s the same as Matthew’s answer.
I think nationally, there’s just a real lack of provision for young people, isn’t there? There aren’t many intentional spaces designed for young people, which is lacking across everything. For us it’s you know, the parks. I mean, one of the differences I see with hanging about on the bus and in the bus station – you’d be lucky if you see a bus around where we live. My children rely on me as a taxi driver. If they want to meet their friends, or if they want to go anywhere, I have to physically take them, which is difficult for young people when they are wanting that freedom and independence.
So yeah, it’s definitely sort of parks and kind of the shop. We don’t have massive shopping centres, but there’s a few dotted around our county. My son, who’s 17, I know him and a lot of his mates, a real hangout place for them is the gym. I’ve seen more young people gravitating towards those places like gyms and sporting activities.
Ultimately, because there’s the element of not being able to access transport, there’s a bit of isolation. Lots of young people hang out at home. My son loves gaming and he spends probably like 60 percent of his time with his friends in his bedroom whilst they’re also in their bedrooms. As a parent, that’s kind of hard to balance. I want him out seeing people face to face. I’m passionate about that, but I know how important that time he has is, you know, gaming with his mates.
5)What’s the spiritual landscape like for young people in your area?
Matthew: When I was young, no one would chat about it [faith]. Like if I was the only Christian in my year and talking about spirituality and faith, you’d be seen as a weirdo. But when I talk to young people now, it’s almost the opposite. It’s almost like young people kind of expect you to have some sort of experience or some sort of belief, but it’s very much a tension point in terms of faith, Christian spirituality and things like that.
I’ve also seen it going another way and going towards dangerous things; witchcraft and things like that. I was talking to someone the other week and their R.E. classes are on Ouija boards… and that’s R.E… and that’s what they learn about spirituality.
However, I have good chats with young people in school where I do a reflection space and recently there’s someone talking about how he’s always thought there’s something there and he’s been able to have his Granddad’s Bible recently and started going to church. We talked about curiosity and asking questions before.
It’s like a point of where young people are trying to figure out what spirituality looks like for them and what they believe in. It’s no longer that conversation of ‘do I believe there is something else?’ but ‘what is the something else I believe in?’.
Lou: Yeah, I would completely resonate with what Matthew said. There is definitely a sort of openness and willingness to engage in spiritual conversation.
I know for my three children ( I’ve got two teenagers and a 12 year old) that their friends come to them to ask them questions. I know that my son ends up being a bit of a moral compass for his group of friends. It’s interesting to hear some of the conversations and some of the things they ask him.
Specific to rural areas, I think the place of the parish church is still quite central. It’s still kind of seen as a central community hub. It’s not necessarily that young people are going to the churches, but it’s still seen as quite an important part of the community.
Therefore, I guess there’s that foundation and history of the faith that’s still embedded in conversation, and spiritual learning, and things like a willingness to go along to the harvest festival. I found this interesting moving up from the south, because it’s a huge farming community here in Shropshire and I was having to arrange youth groups or church activities around the farming timetable. Things like Harvest Festival are really key in our area, and all the families will come out and young people really engage with stuff like that.
Another point to say is around physical landscape. There is that connection to nature and God’s creation, which maybe you don’t get in some other areas. Here in Shropshire, there’s just an abundance of being able to kind of make that connection. You know, when you go outside my front door, there are no lights anywhere else, so you can see the whole skyscape of all these amazing stars. What an amazing kind of conversation starter and opportunity to connect!
6)What are the biggest challenges for young people you see in your area?
Lou: There’s a real kind of inequality in being rural, which can impact access to provision and things like that. Earlier I mentioned transport – there’s a real massive lack of transport. So, for example, there might be this amazing youth event on somewhere, but a lot of young people can’t get to it. As a youth-worker you’ve got to think carefully about where something is and how the young people get there. There’s definitely challenges around that.
Also with rurality, there’s an isolation, because maybe young people can’t get to things, there is a lack of provision or there’s not so many opportunities. So yeah, there’s that element of isolation around where we live as well. We’ve got lots of challenges around things like food poverty and county lines is also really big where we are.
There’s also a lack of volunteers, a lack of funding, a lack of physical resources, a lack of buildings and all of that.
But what I’d like to say is that if there’s a youth worker in a rural context, there can often be the temptation to compare to other areas with all of this amazing, big-style youth work going on and you can feel like you’re not serving your young people as well, because you don’t have the resources or you’ve only got a small group of young people. But I think it’s good not to compare – it’s about using what we have where we have. There’s real value in the small stuff, because you can really build relationship and get to know people.
Hannah: Yeah, even though you might be reaching less young people, it’s not small to them. That is the youth provision that they’re receiving and it could mean so much to them.
Matthew: I love that Lou picked up on that. It’s not small to the young person. A lot of the youth work I see happening is small groups in the city. For context, Glasgow is made up of lots of communities next to each other, but they don’t necessarily cross boundaries. There are lots of little youth groups of around five or six young people, but that’s what they say they want and they value that.
In terms of challenges, county lines and gangs are big here and it’s also easy to slip into drug culture and drinking underage. I was having a chat with someone who was dealing with the issues of teen pregnancy recently too.
One of the things young people are facing links to my word ’aware’. They pick up on the emotions of their parents and the things they’re facing (eg. food poverty). Young people know, even if they’re not being talked to about it, and they need space to process that. I was talking to a young person who’s under exam age (15ish) and he’s had to take on a job in a chip shop to help keep his family going.
I’ve also noticed young people are years behind in their education. For example, some young people can’t read writing and they’re 12/13/14 years old.
The other challenge I’ve seen is multiculturalism. For example, we have a drop-in where a lot of Muslim young people come and we serve hot chocolate, but they can’t have it because its Ramadan, and the other young people don’t know what to do with that.
7)What area is thriving when it comes to young people and engagement?
Lou: One of my words earlier was ‘helpfulness’. Because there’s not a lot going on, young people are really up for offering their skills, input and voice into things.
Where I’m based, there’s a church that runs a holiday club which my children have attended for the past 10 years, and they think it’s the bee’s knees. It’s for primary age but those in secondary can become a young leader. The numbers coming along are amazing. Lots of young people come forward as young helpers and the willingness to pass on what they once experienced is amazing. All my children were helpers, and they absolutely loved it.
And then, going back to what I said about how we are in an amazing landscape, the opportunity to make connections with the natural world and helping young people to make sense of who they are, who God is and spiritual conversation within that natural world is great.
Matthew: I’ve been seeing similar things – young people having the heart, desire and want to serve, or to invite their friends. We’ve seen lots of young people doing what can usually be seen as daunting and inviting their friends along to things. Young people are thriving when it comes to talking about their faith.
Engagement-wise, it can always be a challenge to get into a school, but I’ve noticed that those spaces, not just the young people, are more open to us going in. Urban detached work is also a place where young people seem to really be wanting to talk to us about faith on the streets.
Word Of The Month: Unhinged
Unhinged – chaotic, wild, unpredictable, comical
“Did you see our leader dancing dressed as a banana? The behaviour was unhinged.”