EUKN - European Urban Knowledge Network - Toolkit for youth participation in urban policies

Toolkit for youth participation in urban policies

Introduction

Local authorities find it difficult to offer young people the role of participants rather than that of spectators in local life. The city of Bristol offered other European cities an opportunity to address the issue by creating a thematic network on youth and participation.

Description

At the outset of this project, potential partners were invited to join a network in which young people would be empowered to make a contribution to civic life in their cities. Making recommendations to statutory bodies and help developing forms of governance that encourage the active participation of young people were also goals of the network.

The idea behind this was simple: young people are the future and, as such, they should be the source of solutions to local issues. The responsibility of democratic cities is to create opportunities, to open up decision-making processes and to provide young people with the tools and support to engage meaningfully with issues that are of importance to them.

This toolkit is intended to provide professionals with tools and examples of good practices to help them structure and evaluate their efforts in the planning, implementation and political enforcement of processes that young people participate in. It is intended to be used across a wide-range of local authority departments, and aims to demonstrate that young people can and should be involved in decision-making in all areas that have an impact on them and their communities.

Background information

Through their participation young people can contribute significantly to their cities by:

developing their own understandings of citizenship, their knowledge, skills, ambitions and confidence;
reinvigorating the democratic credentials of city government and bridging the democratic deficit that threatens to undermine local political structures;
improving the efficiency of services directed at or affecting them.

Methodology

This toolkit is the product of two years of work by a network of nine European cities in six EU Member States. Over 100 young people have evaluated existing youth led projects and developed new initiatives, based on local research which they have carried out. This work was organised as a series of “focus groups”. Focus group results and outcomes were fed into two network-wide meetings in which experiences were shared.

From these meetings seven key themes relating to youth participation have been identified:

Different understandings of participation.
Recognising young people's diversity.
Making participation credible to young people.
Motivation, why should young people want to participate?
Sustaining youth participation.
Young people's voices must be heard for them to participate in civic life.
Resources for participation.

EU involvement

The URBACT Programma is partially financed by the EU.

Conclusions

Some recommendations of this toolkit on youth participation are:

Validation, consultation, steering and management are all possible roles for young people. Young people can play a part in any decision-making process within a city, from programming the timetable for their local youth centre to evaluating city-wide youth services and making-decisions on what ought to be funded in the future.
Simply opening up opportunities for participation to “all” is not enough, disadvantaged and excluded young people often need to be pro-actively engaged and encouraged.
Local authorities should negotiate with young people to identify roles for young people. Local authorities must be open and honest with young people about what they want to achieve through involving them and should be able to deliver on any commitments made.
To ensure real change, participation should be integrated into a culture of dialogue between local authorities and young people, not “bolted on” to existing practices.
The planning and implementation of youth participation should be based on a thorough assessment of resources (both human and financial), political will and young people's interests, needs and capabilities.

Contact info

City of Bristol, United Kingdom
Mr S. Morris (Programme Manager, Urban 2), tel. +44 117 903 9795

Contact info

City of Bristol, United Kingdom
Mr L. Ray (project coordinator), tel. +44 117 903 9793

Publication date

01/06/2006

Researcher

Laury Ray (ed.)

URBACT Young Citizens’ Project. Toolkit for Youth Participation in Urban Policies (PDF, Eng, 2.6 MB)

Document type

research

Themes

Urban Policy > Social inclusion & integration > Community development

Keywords

Citizens' participation