Can a youth club revival help the ‘anxious generation’? – podcast | Young people
“I was sitting in the metro on the North line heading south and noticed a group getting on – a man and three young people. There was something going on that I couldn’t recognise. They weren’t from school. They didn’t look like a family group.”
Emma Warrenjournalist and author of Up the Youth Club: Illuminating a Hidden History, explains to Helen Pidd how she realized that the man she was observing was a youth worker. “Bringing people in, getting them out. I was watching someone extremely skilled. He was turning the end of the subway into a youth club and leading a conversation.”
Warren highlights the devastating impact that a decade of austerity has had on Britain’s network of youth centers and explains how youth clubs are, in many ways, a uniquely British phenomenon – shaped by the stark inequalities of the Industrial Revolution, the aftermath of the Second World War and post-war optimism. Warren explores the substantial cultural impact these clubs have had on the country and explains the difference a skilled youth worker can make to a young person’s life.
Finally, Warren and Pidd discuss the UK government’s new youth services strategy and whether it will be enough to bring Britain’s youth clubs back from the brink.
Support the Guardian today: theguardian.com/todayinfocuspod
