‘We’re told we won’t amount to anything’: is it possible to change the fortunes of young people living in England’s coastal towns? | Young people

On the beach in Weston-super-Mare, on the south-west coast of England, there is a hint of a chilly breeze in the air but the sun is out and the clouds are faint, whispy streaks across a pleasantly blue canvas. A couple of fishing boats are tethered to the harbour wall and a lone man with a metal detector wanders slowly along the sand. A small shop selling ice-creams has a few takers, despite the nip in the air.

Yet behind its low-key but welcoming seafront lies the evidence of a cloudier, more complex reality.

“A lot of emphasis is put into the main seafront for things to look nice and for the roads to be fixed, and for everything to be up and working,” says 21-year-old Ceilidh, who has lived in Weston all her life. “But then you look around the estates and there are potholes everywhere, shop fronts are falling down and there’s mould in many of the houses.”

Coastal towns and communities consistently dominate UK government deprivation statistics, and young people who live in them face some of the country’s worst health outcomes and educational attainment levels, and are exposed to poorer mental health provision and transport infrastructure.

New data from the University of Essex’s Centre for Coastal Communities, published by the Guardian today, suggest these factors are having a greater than average impact on their mental health. Self-reported mental distress – measured using a widely recognised scale – was three times greater in young people in some of the most deprived coastal communities than in their peers in comparable places inland.

“We don’t yet know why these young people are being left out but one reason might be that they are not demanding help in the way the older generation is, or if they are, they are not having their voices heard,” says Dr Emily Murray, director of the Centre for Coastal Communities.

The Guardian is launching a year-long reporting series, Against the Tide, with those aged 16 to 25 at the forefront. For the past six months we have been travelling to port towns and seaside resorts around England to discover how younger people feel about the places they live and what changes would enable them to build the futures they want. We will continue our reporting over the next 12 months, talking to young people such as Ceilidh, living in coastal towns.

Growing up on a deprived council estate, as she did, carries a stigma that is hard to shake, says Ceilidh. “Most people who grew up on the Bourneville estate are lumped into categories, told things like ‘oh, you’re a druggie’, or ‘you’ll never grow up to amount to anything’,” she says. “We’re very much left to the sidelines, which then makes it quite a dangerous place to live, because people take on that opinion that everybody else has of them, and then they will run with it, and they’ll actually become that thing.”

Penny and Archie, two 19-year-olds living in Southend-on-Sea on the east coast are trying to find somewhere to buy food on their lunch break from the local college. Although both work part-time in hospitality jobs, they feel despondent about building a future for themselves in the town.

“At this point I don’t see much of a future for Southend,” says Penny. “All the shops are closing, crime is getting worse, there’s graffiti and litter everywhere, drugs. I work and live here and so I see it on a daily basis. I think it’s gone pretty downhill.”

Archie says he will leave when he has enough money and can go and get a job elsewhere. “I don’t plan on staying in Southend for ever. It’s definitely easy to go down a bad path. When I was younger there were loads of things like youth programmes and places you can go where there were games and things to do, good places for young kids to go to kill time. Now, you don’t see these things any more.”

Stefania Fiorentino, one of the authors of a report on “left-behind” coastal places from the University of Cambridge’s department of land economy and the Bartlett school of planning at University College London (UCL), says their research found young people were often disproportionately adversely affected by the lack of investment in their towns and communities.

“In many places there are no coastal economies any more. This is fuelling the out-migration of young people who have the skills, resources or qualifications to leave and leaving the more fragile behind.”

UCL researchers recently travelled around England’s coastline interviewing dozens of policymakers and practitioners about the issues where they live and work. They concluded the problems that came up were almost universally influenced by geographic isolation.

Lisa February, 25, says it’s a common feeling where she lives. “A lot of people see Grimsby as the end of the line, quite literally, as the train line ends here and there’s no passing traffic, so it can feel quite isolated. It has one of the busiest ports in the country, but I don’t feel particularly connected to that.”

Nineteen-year-old Taylor lives on a Weston-super-Mare estate that is, in his own words, “literally just housing”, with little public transport in and out of the town centre. His nearest bus stop is a 20-minute walk along a main road, before his hour’s journey to college each day. “It’s a first-world problem I know,” he jokes. “But it can make you feel quite isolated.”

The lack of long-term employment opportunities is a common complaint. In Harwich, Thomas, 17, Bradley, 24, and Callum, 19, are all desperate to work. “I just want a job and to make money, I’d do anything,” says Callum.

They all have GCSEs, and Thomas is at college studying public services, while Bradley has been to two colleges and done a number of courses.

“The only people who have jobs in my friend group only got them because they know people,” says Thomas. “Mostly that’s working in a restaurant or a bar. My cousin used to work for a big supermarket and she started when she was 17. Now big corporations don’t seem to hire younger people any more and I don’t know why.”

Much of the support available for young people comes from the voluntary sectors. Where this is combined with a forward-thinking council that joins up with these services to offer early interventions on crime prevention, or dedicated physical and mental health support, the results are evident.

On an overcast morning in Weston-super-Mare, Michael O’Connor, head of North Somerset council’s youth justice service, is organising a group of teenagers planting trees in a small, unremarkable looking park. O’Connor, unperturbed by the sudden onset of drizzle, is enthusiastically darting between teenagers, helping them dig.

He was brought in by North Somerset council because of his approach, a model called “child first”, which he previously used successfully with young people in Swindon.

He explains: “We spend very little or no time thinking about the behaviour [young people] were involved in and think more in terms of how their identity has allowed them to behave in the way they have, and what do we need to do through relationships to shift that identity?”

Activities such as tree planting, he says, provide interactions and roles for identity development and encourage a sense of achievement, helping the young person and the community.

“Some of our most vulnerable children have experienced repeated exposures to trauma and they simply haven’t had those experiences at school, of, say being in that school play, or being praised for the work they’re doing in school,” he says. “So we’re trying to find the opportunity through targeted interventions that provide multiple experiences of love, nurture, care … interactions of worth and value.”

He says he has often witnessed a “sense of embarrassment” from young people in Weston about where they live.

“There’s some really great opportunities for children and young people if we can just start to turn the dial on how they think,” he says. “When we change that narrative and be proud of place, you can really change communities.”

Taylor has been helped by a “brilliant” youth worker who has encouraged his passion for photography. He lives with high levels of anxiety, in part due to a past difficult experience. “The photography has been brilliant,” he says. “I’ve always loved it but one day I went down to the local bike races and rented out a lens from college, and perched up on some dunes and got some photos. It felt like so much fun.”

Those photos have since made up part of Taylor’s coursework – he is studying art and design and has been offered a university place – and featured in an exhibition. “I also like street photography because I can just put some music on, walk around wherever and try and take some cool shots.”

The UCL researchers who spoke to local policymakers said their strongest recommendations included providing year-round leisure and entertainment facilities for young people, the need for youth centres, proper funding for services and for young people to be involved in decision-making. “I think letting people make decisions is massive, it’s so important in our town,” says one interviewee.

In Weston, Fiona Matthews, the creative director of an arts charity called Super Culture, believes “uplifiting and creative experiences” are a crucial part of the path to better mental health in seaside towns. “It’s also all about partnership with communities, services and organisations. Between us, we can create a scaffold for a place and its people that is based on listening and connecting.”

In Grimsby, February co-founded lowercase theatre, working with aspiring artists across north-east Lincolnshire. “Growing up I was always told to get out of Grimsby. I was really fortunate that when I was about 14 I joined a youth theatre that gave me mentors and through their help, opportunities to stay here. I didn’t know these things existed until I went to the theatre and met them.”

For Ceilidh, who has been involved with Super Culture since she was a toddler, the chance to change where she lives is real. She has helped children in schools who struggle with mainstream education, as well as working on drama and circus skills with local Gypsy and refugee communities. She also recently gave a speech to board members of a local group outlining what she believes needs to be done to continue making Weston a better place. She is, she says, extremely hopeful about the years ahead. “That’s because I know that I’m making steps towards making my town a much better place than the place I grew up in. I always said, growing up, that I wanted to be part of that transformation, and perhaps that’s something a lot of people say. But I am proud that I went out there and have actually become part of that change.”