Banff & Macduff Youth-Led Club

Click here to complete the Parent/Carer/Participant Consent Form if you are a

• the parent/carer of child under 16 who wants to participate (parental/carer consent is required for their participation in the session!)
• a young person aged 16-or-over who wants to participate

What is the Project?

Banff Academy and A Place in Childhood (APiC) have won a small grant from Aberdeenshire Council to support further development of young people’s ideas and aspirations for a local “youth-led club”.

APiC will be coming into Banff Academy on June 24th and 26th to support pupils to shape up a business proposal for their/your “youth-led club”, and a plan for taking this forward. This includes running a first pilot at a town centre location over the summer.

What is the Youth-Led Club?

This year, young people in the area have been leading on local activities to establish what’s good about Banff and Macduff, and what needs improving, as a part of Banff Academy’s Project-Based Learning Curriculum, and Nescan Hub’s Just Transition Communities Project. This has included discussions within the Support Hub facilitated by the Community Chartering Network and Nescan Hub, and also a mapping the local area and priorities facilitated by Aberdeen for a Fairer World and A Place in Childhood with Banff Academy and Banff and Macduff Primary Schools .

A common priority upon which all young people agreed was the need for a warm, safe, affordable and inclusive hangout for young people to meet, plan, and play together.

This “youth-led club”, as someone called it, would be young people’s own place, where the culture, activities, skills-sharing, décor, food, ground rules, everything is decided collectively by them. Adult involvement is welcomed, but only in support of their plan and ideas, not to lead and supervise.

Young people told us many of them don’t have anywhere to go or anything to do locally. They are bored, frustrated, and have little choice but to hang out at home or on the streets.

They felt this in turn, is causing unnecessary trouble, mistrust, misunderstandings and divides within the community. Many felt that only they can fix these issues because adults don’t understand how different young people’s world and its pressures are from theirs. As well as being a place for fun and socialising, they also envisaged the “youth-led club” as enabling young people to co-create a new positive youth culture and role models, peer-to-peer skill share, figure out solutions to issues and provide a space where stakeholders could come to engage with them around these, and in short, show their community everything they’re capable of.

These ideas were so clear, strong and sophisticated that Banff Academy, in collaboration with A Place in Childhood (APiC), actively sought ways to support them in developing them further.

While we can’t promise anything, with young people’s wisdom and participation, the small grant can enable their ideas to be taken to a vital next step.

What We Will Do

The starting point for our workshops on the w/c June 24th will be the ideas around the Youth-led Club which have emerged in activities to-date.

The whole project will be split between three stages between now and June. These are:

Session 1: June 24th 2024

• Re-engaging with participants to revisit project aims and ideas and discuss / agree next steps
• Develop ideas into a draft club/business proposal (ideally in relation to floor plans of a potential town centre location).

Session 2: June 26th 2024

• Q&A calls with one or more similar successful projects in Scotland to gain expert considerations regarding the draft proposal.
• Optimising the draft proposal in response to learnings. Identifying / discussing potential funding routes.
• Planning the summer pilot.

Session 3: Summer 2024

• Piloting the youth-led club in situ at a town centre location some point(s) over the summer. This could involve community stakeholders who have expressed an interest in supporting the project.
• Optimising the draft proposal in response to learnings from the pilot.

Session 4: Community Presentation?

• There is an option for the young people to present their final proposal to their peers and communities via appropriate channels, to garner local ideas and support for next steps.

What’s involved?

Two in-school half-day sessions the w/c June 24th. An in situ pilot youth club session in a town centre location at some point over the summer. A presentation of the final proposal to the community and peers.

Why is it important to participate?

According to the young people of Banff and Macduff, a youth club is only going to attract young people if it is designed by them to address their own needs and priorities.

They felt that if was adult designed and supervised, it was unlikely young people would be interested.

As such, if young people don’t participate in and ‘own’ the co-design, then the project will not be successful.

We’re also hoping participation will be a rich learning experience for those who may have an interest in areas such as business planning, entrepreneurship, skills-sharing, youthwork and interior design (and other things), as well as having fun!

What will happen to the project results?

We (APiC) will share the project report with relevant stakeholders, once the participants and the Academy to ensure this is faithful and accurate representation of their proposal.

Participants will be free to share their work with their friends and family. Their names will not be shown unless we have permission from them and their parent/carer.

To the extent possible, we will work with partners towards seeking funding and support for the proposal. Any important advice the participants give, we will try to find ways for them (or for us on their behalf) to represent this to people that truly want to improve things for children and young people in their communities.

More info for Parents / Carers:

Ethics:

Completion of this parent/carer/participant consent form is required before participation. This takes 3-5 minutes to complete. You may contact the project lead below through email or telephone should you have any concerns before, during or after the process of this Project.

This Project follows APiC Ethics and Data Protection Policy, which in turn, follow both legal and advisory frameworks around researching with children and young people. While it is not our intention to delve directly into sensitive issues with participants, we recognise that this time of crisis is hard for all of us and talking about it may be (even unexpectedly) difficult. We consider consent to be an ongoing process, and if a participant or yourself withdraws consent at any point we will respect that decision immediately.

We also require affirmation from you (via the consent form)  that you will discuss this project with your child after the process to make sure they are OK with everything regarding how it went and the content. We are always open and available to discuss any concerns or improvements you may have with us before or after the process if that would be helpful to you or to your child.

Data Protection:

APiC is the data controller on this project and upholds the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018. The main form of data collected will be notes, but there may be instances where speech or video is recorded for the sake of disseminating high-quality and appealing outputs. For further details of how your child’s data is processed and stored, you can contact the project lead below.

For Further Information:

Please contact Dr Jamie Hamilton, Co-director Policy and Research at jamie.hamilton@communitychartering.org or on 07816986220.