of a new paradigm of thought that moves away from a focus on childhood and young people as an apprenticeship for adulthood and children and young people as future adults (‘becomings’) to children as active agents in their own lives (‘beings’). However, Prout (2005) subsequently points out that being/becoming is a false dichotomy since all humans (of any age) are constantly and simultaneously both being and becoming. Others have argued that the focus on being and becoming centres on the individual child or young person without taking full account of the context within which the child or young person lives and the relationships that are important in their life (Tisdall and Punch, 2012). This need to consider children’s social relationships has led to some researchers moving beyond the duality of ‘being’ and ‘becoming’ to an extended typology that includes ‘being’, ‘becoming’ and ‘belonging’ (Haw, 2010; Sumsion and Wong, 2011).
It is clear within all three stories that a feeling of ‘belonging’ was important to our experiences with Young Edinburgh Action. In conversations about what ‘belonging’ feels like, we used the word community. Even though the young people involved might have different opinions and different ways of communicating, they all want to find a way to relate to each other because they have chosen to be there and value YEA. For Katherine and Myada, it is also important that they feel that they are part of the YEA community, even during periods of time when they are not going to meetings.
Relationships of many different variations underpin all three stories. Peer relationships were important for both Katherine and Myada, who state that they might not have stayed involved in the project in the early days of their involvement if they hadn’t met other interesting young people and started to build friendships. Subsequently both of them describe how friendships forged in YEA have extended beyond the project and provide ongoing support, both practical and emotional, in other areas of their lives. However, peer relationships are not always positive. Although they chose not to include them in their stories, all three authors were able to identify challenging peer relationships that, at least for short periods of time, had a negative impact on their engagement with YEA.
It is clear from all three stories that relationships between young people and staff both are important and, at times, challenging. When discussing our stories, Myada and Katherine both said that this relationship was important because they were not used to feeling comfortable with adults who were not a part of their family. Young people appreciate the informality of their relationships with YEA staff and the genuine care and support that they receive from staff. However, as her second snapshot illustrates, Christina is constantly negotiating the boundaries of relationships with young people and sometimes not getting it right. Relationships don’t happen between young people and staff but between a particular young person and a particular adult; Christina’s relationship with Myada is different from her relationship with Katherine or from her relationship with a young person who has only recently become involved with the project.
Le Borgne (2017) and Le Borgne and Tisdall (2017) emphasise the important role of the participation worker in youth participation projects, but this role is often missed out of the literature, which tends to focus on the process and the outcomes of participation projects. Myada and Katherine both, however, emphasise the importance of this role. Both describe how the relationship built moves beyond the specific participation projects – Myada saying how YEA staff were the ideal people to support her through difficult times because they already knew her story, Katherine emphasising how little things such as asking how a test went are important.
In their discussion about the three stories, Katherine and Myada discussed how their relationship with Christina made it easier for them to do things that they might otherwise not be able to do, such as speaking at a conference or writing this chapter. They described how their relationships with YEA staff made it easier for them to feel comfortable with other adults in a predominantly adult setting; knowing that they are with someone they trust makes it easier to take risks. However, Myada’s story illustrates that the participation worker also occupies a space in between young people and other adults in their life that might not be so positive; the personal learning and development that she believed to be a positive outcome from her time with YEA was often viewed as problematic by her parents.
In her second snapshot Christina seeks to demonstrate the thought processes that go into a group session that might appear to an onlooker as relatively fun and easy. Interestingly, when discussing the stories for this chapter, Myada could not remember the incident. Christina also asked the other young woman involved to read the snapshot and discussed whether she was happy for us to include it in the chapter. She was happy for it to be included but was sad that the incident had caused Christina to worry and gave some personal background to the situation that gave Christina more insight. The process of building relationships and of negotiating the role of the participation worker is always ongoing.
While the subject of relationships between staff was not explored in the stories, these are also important. Christina notes that, in parallel with relationships between young people that extend beyond the project, although she no longer works with YEA she is still close friends with many of the colleagues she worked with on the project.
Space
The development of the YEA model was particularly informed by an article by Barry Percy-Smith (2010), who states that ‘participation is influenced by the nature of the spaces in which it happens’ (Percy-Smith, 2010, p 109) and argues for a need to rethink participation in terms of creating spaces for effective youth participation. Percy-Smith also talks about participative spaces as sites of social learning and advocates for widening the focus away from decision-making structures (see also Chapter 16 in this book).
YEA indicated a move away from a more structured approach to youth participation towards an approach that prioritised creating spaces for young people to identify and explore issues that they think are important. Katherine and Myada both use the phrase “safe space” to describe their experience of YEA and credited these safe spaces with supporting their own personal journey of developing their own identify, interests and values. They emphasise how the most important things that happened in these spaces were not always the planned activities but, instead, the times when conversations went off on tangents. Myada and Katherine describe how the freedom to let the conversation stray from a set programme and be led by the interests of the young people offers opportunities for them to learn and reflect together, to strengthen their bond as a group, to develop their sense of self in the world and practice self-determination in a safe and supportive group. Myada says that “tangents are where we find our passions”.
Such willingness to allow meandering tangents also challenges the power dynamic between adults and young people. In the longer version of Myada’s story, before it was edited to fit this chapter, she described one action research group where young people were constantly distracted. She knew that staff were frustrated because the group wasn’t making ‘progress’ but still let them explore their own ideas and conversations. While young people’s priority is more often the relationships and the opportunities for personal learning and growth, decision makers and managers almost always see relationships as a means to achieve the desired outcome of young people influencing decisions made. The participation worker often occupies a space in between these different priorities, sometimes pushing young people to stay focused on a task at hand, sometimes persuading adults that time spent doing activities that do not directly or obviously contribute to a project’s outcomes are still valuable. There is, therefore, an ongoing complex dance between tangents and structure,
