‘When I leave, part of me stays’: why Scarborough’s youth won’t turn their backs on the seaside town they love | Environment

IIt’s the morning after a wet and stormy day in the seaside town of Scarborough, Yorkshire. The waves, which the day before were crashing dramatically against the harbor walls, calmed down and a few brave people entered the water with surfboards. There’s a man throwing a ball for his dog on the beach and a kayaker swinging on the waves.

Just by the sea in the city center, Jack and Charlie, both 17, lean forward to listen to 19-year-old Keane’s story about his recent visit to a drama school in London, where he hopes to apply for a place on acting training once he has saved enough money.

“I came out of school and there was this girl on the phone,” he said. “I didn’t know the context of the conversation she was having but she said… ‘I just want to know now if he left me any money,’” he says in a high-pitched, posh voice.

“And I said to myself: ‘you won’t hear anyone say that in our town,'” he adds, while the three teenagers burst out laughing.

“It’s not that I’m scolding her,” he explains hurriedly. “It’s just that something like this seems like planets away from where we are. We make money, we don’t wait for the money to come to us.”

This is an important point of distinction that Keane, Charlie and Jack are all keen to discuss at length. What money means to families where they live, compared to wealthier places elsewhere.

Keane, who had to resit his English GCSEs and admits he had “a lot of problems at school”, was going to apply for an apprenticeship, encouraged by his father who, he says, “struggled to get to where he is today” and just wanted him to earn money as quickly as possible. But at the last minute, he went with a friend to study sixth form at his local college and took the drama course there.

“A lot of my peers who grew up at school have now done apprenticeships,” says Keane, who works as a cleaner at a local hospital to save money. “They work in trades in Scarborough, or maybe further afield in York.

“Not many people have a college education,” he says, “but it’s a question of money.”

Before taking a coffee break and chatting, the three young men warmed up their vocal chords at the Stephen Joseph Theater, where they are part of the Young Company, a drama training program for older children and young adults. They read lines from a play called Feral.

Keane wrote it as a love letter to his hometown, where the character he plays, Adam, struggles with his decision to move to Leeds. Adam wants a better future, but he also loves where he lives. It’s a dilemma faced by countless young people in Britain’s coastal towns, many of whom don’t want to leave but feel they have no choice.

It was also written in response to a 2023 article in the Daily Express newspaper which described Scarborough with the headline: “A beautiful seaside town reduced to a “battlefield” with the reign of terror of young “savages”.” When 17-year-old Keane performed Feral, the powerful monologue won him two awards at the Scarborough Fringe festival.

Charlie is used to people having opinions about where he lives. “I’ve already been judged for living there,” he said. “People were like, ‘Oh, he’s from Eastfield, what a bum. But they say that and they don’t even know me.’

Eastfield was the area the Express article focused on. Formerly a suburb of Scarborough, it is now a distinct small town with some of the most deprived areas in England. It’s where Keane and Charlie are from and which Jack, who lives with his grandparents in Scarborough, says he “loves like home”. He adds: “It has always had a special place in my heart. »

Rob Salmon, head of creative engagement at Stephen Joseph, who works with Keane, Charlie and Jack, says: “When there’s not a lot of money in a place, people don’t have a choice.

“It’s important that the voices of people who live in that context and who understand it dictate how they are perceived,” he says.

All three teenagers aspire to become professional actors, but they all know it’s a difficult choice to work in a place like Scarborough, which can seem a million miles from anywhere.

On the Yorkshire coast in the north-east of England, Scarborough is an hour from York to the west and Hull to the south. As with all other coastal areas of Britain, its geography means that half of its Opportunity Zone is lost to the water. Or, as Salmon puts it when describing the difficulties of attracting theater audiences: “Half our catchment area is fish. »

Like so many seaside resorts in England, the town found itself, in the era of cheap foreign travel, ignored as a holiday destination. But the situation was undoubtedly made worse by the poor transport network, repeatedly cited as the bane of their lives by the local population.

The train service between Scarborough and York usually runs once an hour and the road between the two places, the A64, is single carriageway. Despite decades of pleas for it to be widened to deal with congestion, there is no immediate hope of doing so.

Labor MP for Scarborough and Whitby, Alison Hume, recently said Scarborough’s poor transport links left the town “stuck in the slow lane”, with “stifled opportunities and growth”.

This has meaning beyond the obvious day-to-day frustrations of Labor voters. A 2024 report from consultancy Stonehaven suggests that the constituencies where Reformers were elected (Great Yarmouth, Boston & Skegness, Clacton-on-Sea and South Basildon) share the common factor of a “missing road”. It was either a road that had repeatedly promised improvements, or a road that was needed but never built.

This is undoubtedly one of the reasons why David Skaith, Mayor of York and North Yorkshire since 2024, says that transport is one of the main issues he faces in his role: “Access to quality transport is the basis of everything. »

“A lot of people we talk to on the coast feel trapped, which I think is a horrible way of expressing where you live, but because of this lack of connectivity, a lot of young people in particular feel that way,” he says.

Emily, 29, who works for Scarborough arts charity Arcade, grew up in nearby Bridlington and went to the University of York. She believes a more regular rail service to Scarborough would make a significant difference to people’s lives.

“By making it easier to work in York, it would provide more incentive to stay in Scarborough or Bridlington and contribute to the city,” she says.

Nineteen-year-old Daisy, who also works for Arcade, travels to Scarborough from Bridlington by car because she finds the train is “not the most reliable”. She is happy to have found regular, long-term employment there.

Working during the winter months is a whole new experience for her. “I’ve never worked at this time of year before because all the other jobs I’ve had, like in a gift shop on the harbor and that sort of thing, have always been seasonal,” Daisy says.

Arcade helps communities get involved in the arts and creativity, and Daisy and Emily have organized an event at Gallows Close community center in Barrowcliff, which is tonight hosting Chiedu Oraka, a rapper from Hull who calls himself ‘The Black Yorkshireman’ and recently supported Coldplay on their UK tour.

Alongside musicians from a professional orchestra, he helps a group of children aged eight to 17 to compose their own song about the place where they live.

“I despise the way this kind of [left behind] these places are talked about in the media and elsewhere,” says Oraka, after taking a break from working with children. “But I also know that there will be so many young ‘hidden gems’ in places like Scarborough because these kids have so much to say.”

It’s something he hopes to bring out in the children around him. “What does Barrowcliff mean to you?” » he asks.

“It’s a bit scary here,” one of them said. Another added: “Everything is fine. »

Oraka says: “When I was your age, I also said ‘everything is fine’ about where I lived. [the north Hull estate he grew up on] gave me everything. People said I wasn’t good enough and I proved them wrong. And that’s what I want you to prove too.

Back at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Keane has just finished rehearsing the passage at the end of Feral where Adam is about to board the train to Leeds. If he arrives in London, how will he feel being on the train from Scarborough?

“When Adam gets on the train, only part of him does,” says Keane. “A part of him stays at Eastfield. And really, there couldn’t be truer words. When I leave here, there will always be a part of me that stays behind.”

Additional reporting by Antonia Shipley

The Against the Tide series is a collaboration between the Guardian and documentary photographer Polly Braden and reports on the lives of young people in coastal communities in England and Wales.