Partner News: Youth Social

Youth Social has been funded by Arts Council England to deliver a youth-led project investigating why teens and young adults don’t engage and to develop creative ideas and how to help organisations better promote their activities to younger audiences.

They have funding to run two focus groups with arts organisations to understand the obstacles that they face in engaging young people and to identify the challenges that need to be overcome. Using this as a basis, they will then set up three pop-up creative agencies across Kirklees & Calderdale. These agencies will work with up to 30 young people and will provide participants with a ‘creative experience’ that includes researching the reasons young people don’t engage, identifying the reasons young people would want to be involved in arts activities and co-creating material they would positively respond to.

Opportunities for arts organisations to get involved

1. Participate in the ‘Engaging Young People’ focus group. They will be looking for around 10 local organisations to take part in a 1 hour focus group to explore the type of art opportunities offered to young people and the challenges faced in encouraging young people to engage.

2. Participate in the ‘pop up’ agency sessions. By taking part in the sessions, organisations will get to hear first hand from young people as well as ask questions directly, support the participants in their creative tasks and celebrate with them when they present their findings in the final session

3. Attend the dissemination webinar. Once the three Creative Experiences have been delivered, all the research, findings and creative material will be disseminated via a free online webinar for arts organisations.

Please note this project is fully funded with no cost to any organisations taking part.