Why a post-Brexit UK must put its young people first

Chris Middleton dissects the biggest political decision to face the UK for a generation, and what impact it will have on the young.

The post-referendum UK rightly wants to face the future with hope and optimism, now that a majority of the population has voted to go it alone.

Skills and inward investment are key challenges for post-Brexit Britain, therefore. But while the UK wants to stand tall and inspire the confidence of the international community, we must acknowledge that real-world risks that have been created as a direct result of Brexit – risks to the very things that will be most important to our future success, including skills and inward investment.

One of these is the long-term risk of the UK breaking apart into separate nations competing for the same contracts and the same money. Another is the cost to social cohesion within a country that must now tell a convincing story to win (and retain) international business.

Before we get onto the skills challenge and how that affects our young people in particular, let's take a quick look at what may happen to the country whose independence Leavers believe they have won.

Scotland and Northern Ireland voted Remain. If Scotland detaches itself from the UK and somehow rejoins the continent, it will secure a major competitive advantage over England, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

Meanwhile Northern Ireland will simmer next to its European neighbour across a heavily policed border, and Wales will struggle to get Westminster’s attention. In the long term, a breakup of the UK may be inevitable.

And in an ever more isolated England, very different visions of our society sit side by side in a nation subdivided by severe economic disparity, a North-South schism, a social rift between young and old (exacerbated by the Brexit), and a clash of metropolitan, inner-city, suburban, and rural cultures.

In each of these cases, Brexit has highlighted the divisions, not strengthened national unity. That's a problem we must now address, even though it was a foreseeable consequence of a reckless campaign that seems to have placed personal self-interest above the national interest, in some cases.

Other repercussions are emerging. Just a week ago, it seemed inconceivable – the stuff of dystopian fantasy – that there would be a genuine campaign to declare London an independent city state, although some would argue that the capital has been that since the 1980s. Meanwhile, pockets of anti-immigrant prejudice have opened in some of the communities that were most severely hit by austerity and by the 2008-09 recession.

Again, these complicate the story we need to tell our neighbours, allies, and partners in order to make Brexit work.

Anecdotal reports suggest Brexit appears to have both triggered and ‘legitimised’ sporadic attacks on ethnic minorities, in some communities and in some people’s minds. There have even been reports of anti-gay incidents, directly linked to Brexit. But that does not mean that our tolerant, welcoming UK no longer exists.

That said, even the most passionate and sincere Leaver who believes in a bright future for an independent Britain, free at last of bureaucratic, cronyistic Brussels, must accept that the notion of a single ‘British way of life’ now seems remote. Certainly, it's harder to sell.

That’s important in terms of the narrative we put before the world. Every country needs a story on the world stage. From this week, we must start telling one that the world believes.

A key challenge will be deciding how to attract international business to a UK that seems to be at war with itself, and with the population’s attitudes to Europe split down the middle.

Another key question is: How to convince overseas partners, customers, and prospects that they should invest in the post-Brexit UK? Or in some future independent England – rather than in, say, a competitive, upbeat, outward-looking Scotland that supports both European membership and integration?

As things stand, the ability of the UK to attract skilled, experienced people from the EU and elsewhere to live and work here must also be in doubt. Around the world, front pages reveal that our allies and partners think we’ve lost our minds. That must be a cause for concern for British businesses. We need those skilled people.

So we have to face facts: by seeking to assert our independence in this way, after months of negative campaigning that we now know was based on half truths and misinformation, and in our quest to win back the sovereignty that Parliament already had as a simple constitutional truth, the UK may have made itself toxic to overseas investors.

That's no overstatement: the only figures on the world stage to give Brexit the thumbs-up are Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, and an assortment of terrorist groups.

All of this has particular relevance for the UK’s young people. And it can only be in the nation's youth that the answer to all of the above questions lies.

The government’s own statistics reveal that the UK's young people – our future – were the hardest hit by recession and austerity. UK youth unemployment stands at 13.6 per cent of all 16-24 year olds. That total is falling, but it is still nearly three times higher than the overall unemployment rate of 5.4 per cent. Average wages have also fallen for young people faster than for other workers.

Just a year ago, prominent Outer Ian Duncan Smith warned young people that they would be forced to pick up litter if they wanted to receive benefits. The revelation that the Leave campaign has no post-Brexit plan for Britain suggests that IDS’ strategy for the nation’s youth has progressed little since then. Hardly an inspiring vision.

A tragedy for our young people is that on the day the UK (as it stands) formally leaves the EU, they may lose their right to live and work freely across 27 countries. Brexit may leave them isolated, with none of the advantages of their European peers, separated from a continent that has no reason to help them acquire skills and experience, least of all to invest in them.

(It must be acknowledged that if freedom of movement and labour are not impacted by Brexit, depending on whatever deal the UK strikes with Europe, then Leave campaigners will have failed to achieve their stated goal of quitting.)

Polls show that those young people didn’t vote for Brexit; their grandparents did. But in many cases, those young people didn’t vote at all; they’re disengaged from local politics, while still connected to the wider world via smartphones and social platforms. Their social perspective knows no bounds, but the country they live in is putting up walls. This is why there’s a growing youth revolt on social media.

This means the UK no longer has a choice: it must invest in, and re-engage with, its own young people; invest in their training, education, and professional development; invest in giving them the international perspective that leaving Europe has stripped from them.

After all, their counterparts in Europe can travel and work freely across the continent, just as their American, Chinese, and Indian peers have vast, diverse countries in which to gain experience and skills.

And the UK must stop burdening its students with debt – a practice that’s made them into little more than grist for the financial services mill.

From the day parliament invokes Article 50 and we leave the EU, the nation must start paying its undergraduates’ tuition fees again. It’s the least we can do to show faith in them.

But rumours of international banks exiting the City are rife, our credit rating has been cut – which means businesses' credit ratings have also been cut, making borrowing more expensive for everyone – and so a financial services sector damaged by the Brexit may say that it can’t afford to write off a generation’s student loans. The government may find that is true.

Whatever the pros and cons of Brexit, we stand on the threshold of it being a reality. It’s clear that whatever plan does emerge for a post-Europe Britain, our young people must be at the heart of it. If they are not, then we have abandoned the generation that will left to make this work.

---

Chris Middleton is a Senior Company Associate at always possible

Keep playing

Kate Regester reflects on the way the art of play is driving community development.

When I walked in to the Creating Routes workshop, at Creativeworks London on 29th April, people were already sat on chairs around the edge of the room, leaving a big empty space. What’s going to happen in that space? I wondered, as I sat down and shook hands with the person next to me. I was safe in my seated position with the weight of my backpack pressing against my legs. Then the workshop facilitator stood up and invited us to leave our stuff behind and join them.

The move from the chair to the middle of the room was weirdly daunting. It was only a short distance but it was stepping into the unknown. The group had never met before, who were these facilitators? Anything could happen. It sounds like a little thing, but as the 140+ projects that were showcased as part of the Creativeworks Festival attest, when you get a group of interested people stepping into the same space the results can be huge, far-reaching and overall surprising.

One of the things that stuck with me from the day of installations, talks, performances and workshops was a comment from the panellists in Women, Creative Collaborations and Digital Thinking who said that we are brought up to believe that work is a serious business, when actually the best work comes out when we play. Something that has been recognised by the top Fortune 100 companies like Google where play is more than just an activity, it is a mindset created by a value system. Play is an attitude which promotes negotiation, creative problem solving, taking risks and reaching a consensus when our different imaginary worlds collide.

The panellists, Ghislaine Boddington (Body>Data>Space), Ruth Catlow (Furtherfield), Lydia Fraser-Ward (Fantasy High Street) and Roberta Communian (King’s College London), discussed how digital technologies, like architecture, embed our values and interests into the future whether this is through the technologies, businesses, education and art themselves or the behaviours we exhibit when using them.  With this comes the importance of providing and promoting opportunities so everyone is represented in the creative process, ensuring those values meet the needs of every future user. Alongside which is the way we, as individuals, take responsibility for championing and supporting the younger generation into the workforce.

Collaboration is another big word bouncing around at the moment and an easy answer to some of the challenges faced by all organisations in the changing funding landscape. However, it is not always so easy to achieve, precisely because it require those skills which can only be developed through play. Play is not just about what happens in closed rooms or a responsibility of a curriculum; it’s an attitude that gives people permission to experiment and when the outcome does not turn out as you expect, creating a safe space where that learning can be turned in to an opportunity. In your workplace or in that space with other interested people. 

At Brighton City Lab on 28th April, I met individuals from a range of Social Enterprises and community-minded projects across Brighton. I saw a network of people sharing experience, skills and connections, coming together with the opportunity to explore ideas. It brought home how much of our learning happens not on the chairs at the edge of the room but when we are in the middle of the room, working together.

To go back to the Creating Routes workshop, you’ll be pleased to know that the middle of the room didn’t swallow me up. The facilitators asked us to choose from a series of random objects (head torches, police line tape, small mesh hats with bells on) something that reflected one of our skills and take it back to our groups. We entered the space as individuals with something unique to offer, put our skills together and created an imaginary project. In short, we played.

Links:

http://www.creativeworkslondon.org.uk/festival

http://www.resourcecentre.org.uk/brighton-city-lab/

---

Kate Regester is the Project Development Manager at always possible

// kate@alwayspossible.co.uk

The dangerous money mirror

I have been asked to write more frequently on our activities at always possible, as well as interesting things we've been reading or listening to. I will do my best!

On Wednesday, I spent a lot of time thinking and talking about money. This isn't completely unusual, but I was *really* thinking about money. What is money? Who creates it? What actual value does it have?

Three reasons why this was consuming me:

1. always possible are developing a range of interactive workshops for schools and colleges in partnership with the brilliant social enterprise, Goodmoney. 

The workshops examine the philosophy of economics and ask 'what is money?' In just 90 minutes, mathematician Dr Mick Taylor deconstructs the idea of an economy and economism; gamifies the mechanisms of trade (with playing cards) until most of the room are in debt and a small number are very rich without even noticing - and enables discussion around the fact that only 3% of the world's money actually exists.  

Our willing and able guinea pigs were the lunchtime Economic Society at Cardinal Newman VI Form College in Hove, but the sessions are being piloted  with a range of different ability and different level groups across Sussex in the next two weeks.

Our aim is to create a really exciting workshop and resource programme that uses applied maths, philosophy and economics to enable some critical thinking skills about some of the realities of debt, interest and credit.

Dr Mick uses the analogy of a mirror. You can look into a mirror, and what it shows us back depends on what we project into it. Some mornings, it's not too bad - the mirror tells us that it's going to be a good day, you don't look as grotesque as you have done. Other days, the mirror tells us to go back to bed - it wouldn't be fair to allow your face to go public today. It is a horrorshow. The mirror is obsequious or mean - it can never be objective.

OR - before we look *at* it, we can remind ourselves that it is a piece of glass, backed by some reflective foil. It was invented to be functional and it can never influence what it reflects - whatever I *feel* is down to my own brain.

Why do we allow money to have a personality? When was the last time you only considered it to be what it is - rather than a relief, a burden, safety, luxury, pressure, power or access to pleasure?

We've got things to tweak, but feedback has been great so far.

Fantastic workshop thoroughly engaging, challenging and interesting. Could have been longer.

The best aspect of the workshop in my opinion was Dr Mick's ability to combine deep thought and fun into a short 90 minutes workshop.

2. Following this workshop, I walked over the hill to 'The Hatchery', my current co-working space which is full of start-ups and entrepreneurs getting their businesses off the ground. It was Event Night and we had talks and debates on small business finance, legal business structures and cashflow. 

My mind was constantly disappearing back to the afternoon:
At what point in recent history did debt - or the transference of ownership to the money-lenders - become normal and expected? Debt is now how we gain a degree, start a business and how we buy a laptop, let alone a house. 

I have personal debt, but I am keen to avoid getting my business into debt until that is the most sensible way to grow it - but the language of debt is so normal. To gamble on one's potential, at a price, is what we now normalise for our children. What does this do to us culturally? Does this change how we consider our future actions? 

The banks can create and destroy money like a conjourer without having to print a thing. Most people are taught in schools that money is finite - does that help us understand it better?

3. I get home at around 8pm to find a letter from The Arts Council offering a 5-figure grant towards the running costs of our big Summer project, Starboard - the UK's first open air children's theatre festival. 

I am absolutely thrilled. A grin from ear to ear.

The mirror has sucked me in again. 

Reclaiming The Radical

At 13, I was a self-proclaimed ‘indie kid’, often to be found in the playground with a guitar and a book of poetry, spouting soundbites from philosophers that I didn’t fully understand. It felt important and it enabled me to belong to a ‘tribe’, while at the same time I could convince myself that I was unique. Looking back I can see that it was all a normal part of growing up, asserting my own identity, and finding like-minded people. It was also completely harmless.

Today as an educationalist, a parent, and a so-called ‘grown-up’, I keep my eyes open with a mix of nostalgia and curiosity for all the new tribes who will follow in the footsteps of the indie kids, townies, goths, crusties, and sk8ers that went before them, But I’m not sure that such tribes really exist anymore.

With the dawn of the social media age, the internet has broken apart the concept of ‘subculture’ so that everyone can simultaneously belong to every tribe and no tribe. Borders and boundaries are tumbling and the idea of identifying yourself in terms of a single music or fashion counterculture has become more mainstream than the mainstream itself. Everything seems to be a mash-up, and in that environment sometimes a clear message can appear especially seductive.

But my nostalgia for my own youth is increasingly tinged with something else: a worry that some young people today might not know how to belong to something anymore, or, indeed know where to belong. Whereas youth-focused subcultures used to put safe, local boundaries around teenagers’ natural need to rebel, the very essence of ‘belonging’ to something has changed in a world of 24-hour mobility, globalisation, and social networking. After all, why join a club when you can contact the entire world?

Today, if young people feel ‘other’, dispossessed, or different to the people around them, then the Web can offer an altogether different type of lifeline, one that takes them away from their immediate worlds, or connects them with radically different ones. Online platforms, gaming communities, fan groups, and more, may open up new avenues of friendship, sometimes with strangers in other parts of the world who appear to share common interests and passions.

Of course, that can be a wonderful thing, and vulnerable young people may discover a world of support and understanding rather than harm. But many internet safety specialists tell us that that the dispersed and amorphous nature of online communities can sometimes be used to hide very different agendas. Some experts warn that children are increasingly at risk of being lured towards extreme ideas and ideological kinships.

So how worried should we really be about some young people’s frustrations or anger being turned into something that is genuinely destructive to either themselves or to the people around them?

The ‘radicalisation’ of disaffected young people often occurs when the immediate mainstream feels alien to them, while a community elsewhere – with its promise of thousands of like-minded people – appears to offer easy answers to big questions. The construction of fundamentalist politics and beliefs sits much more easily at the centre of that perfect storm of private disaffection and external allure than it does in any other scenario.

It’s important to emphasise that all political viewpoints, faiths, and belief systems have their extreme proponents, and in today’s world of fast news and easy social shares, it’s easy to mistake the extreme as representing the centre or the majority. Sometimes young people make that mistake too.

Radicalisation, then, is not the preserve of any one political or religious movement, or of any one belief system or community. But the more conservatively fundamentalist that any viewpoint is, ironically the bigger the change from the status quo it offers, or demands. No wonder that children and young people (and within that, we know that BAME and looked after children even more so) are often at the greatest risk from any such message, especially if it is one of hatred of the people around them. 

To say that the fear and prevention of radicalisation is a political hot potato at the moment is an understatement, particularly for anyone whose job is to teach and care for young people. It’s a stark reality that in a very small, but serious, number of cases, the lure of various ideologies has resulted in people uprooting themselves to follow the promise of a different life, in some cases fighting for causes that value the brutal subjugation of dissent. Nobody pretends that our own society is perfect, but some teenagers’ disaffection makes it easier for others to attach a hate-filled or violent viewpoint to young people’s commonplace desire for change.

The Home Office and Ofsted are particularly keen to roll out the Prevent Agenda, a set of safeguarding duties that legally oblige education and youth support services to look out for and report any signs that suggest an individual in their care may be being ‘radicalised’.

In Sussex, where I live, there are some particular areas of concern with small networks of young people turning openly to hateful and righteous messages online. Social networks are an unparalleled tool for spreading a message quickly, but once it is out there is no taking it back – a lesson that many teenagers are still learning the hard way.

Safeguarding has, and always will be, paramount to those teaching children and young people, but this environment is certainly presenting some new challenges. Some education providers – mainly FE colleges and independent training providers – have already had their inspection grades reduced because their internal Prevent Agenda strategy has been underdeveloped.

But the government’s new approach to monitoring and intervention is coupled with another obligation on teachers, and that is to embed the concept of ‘British values’ into their school curriculum. According to the Department for Education, these values are: democracy; the rule of law; individual liberty and mutual respect; and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs.

It’s understandable, therefore, that some teachers, social workers and parents are finding areas of confusion or potential conflict between these two sets of obligations. For example: at what point does monitoring students’ extracurricular behaviour and beliefs, as the Prevent Agenda implies, encroach on their individual liberty, which the teaching of British values is designed to protect?

Other questions that teachers find themselves asking include: when is a radical belief no longer tolerated? How is that expressed, and by whom? Is the concept of ‘radical’ in itself always a bad thing? And what makes certain – presumably more moderate – values uniquely ‘British’ – rather than, say, European, Asian, African, or American?

Many teachers and assessors are uneasy with the implications of viewing ethical conduct in national, rather than simply ‘human’, terms. For one thing, many long-established ‘British’ values are missing from the government’s own list – what about fairness, for example? And for another, there is a clear inference that someone born elsewhere, including in Europe or the US, will have a completely different set of values. On the whole, they probably won’t. And there’s another consideration too: the internet is global.

I’m in no way trying to make or score any political points here, but these prescriptions do leave themselves open to question – especially when there are penalties involved for not getting it ‘right’.

Most teachers and parents, when thinking about the safety of children, are beginning to understand that the internet is a place like any other. While virtual places may feel more abstract, they are still places where people meet and engage, where behaviours have consequences, and where the urge to explore is compelling, even if the risks are great.

We now understand all too well that vulnerable people can be groomed and influenced without ever meeting the perpetrator. We also understand that values and ethics and codes of conduct are as much in play as in the real world, but can also appear looser and less clear, and be skewed by the anonymity of participants.

So I suggest that what we have here is a real opportunity. What this all boils down to is that young people’s disaffection and/or alienation always has the potential of leading to destructive and hate-fuelled ideas, thoughts, and actions. Yet, crucially, it always has the potential for the exact opposite, too. As communities, we need to look for the tipping point at which frustration can become a drive to build and change for the better, rather than to forge a need to destroy.

What we have come to call ‘radicalisation’ is seen by those who entice young people towards hate-filled behaviours as a means to an end; it is not the end itself. And it’s worth remembering something equally important: the connotations of extreme hate and barbarism attached to the word ‘radical’ are a recent phenomenon.

We should all work to ensure that ‘radical’ never becomes permanently associated with negative, vicious, hate-filled, or violent behaviour. Every dictionary definition of radical speaks of ‘change’, ‘thoroughness’, ‘innovation’, and ‘action’, and there are countless positive examples of this online. Lots of ‘radical’ thinkers have changed the world for the better, after all.

For example, every day we see social media being used to gather signatures on petitions; to raise money for charities, disadvantaged people, and emergency or disaster relief; to call public figures to account, and to co-ordinate rallies or support new ideas, inventions, campaigns, and ventures. This is radical. These too are ‘radicalised’ moments – and ‘radicalised’ people are playing a part in these moments – and the internet now plays the most crucial part of all in connecting people and reaching out to others.

As responsible adults, our duty is to do more than shield, monitor, and prevent vulnerable children from discovering the dark places. We should also encourage and persuade them to ‘think big’ about what the future could look like. As a society we need to be having conversations with our children and our students about what hatred, fear, difference, and extreme behaviours feel like, look like, and sound like. Disenfranchised? Feeling left out? OK. So what can we do together to change that and make things better for everyone?

As I touched on earlier, I get excited about the idea of human values, and the role such discussions could have in getting children and young people to talk about subjects such as ideology, globalisation, identity, duty, and social action.

After all, the internet rarely respects sovereign borders – unless censorship is involved, as in China – so perhaps there should be a set of taught/discussed human values that remind us of the faces and the hands behind the machines. We can hang onto great ideas such as mutual respect and tolerance, but perhaps add the value that shared spaces should always be used for the common good – and that innovation, generosity, and goodwill should be rewarded.

When we’re picking apart the internet with our children and examining the connections that they’re making, we could do worse than to hang the conversation on concepts such as peace, truth, right conduct, love, and non-violence. But what do these actually mean, beyond the clichés and sentimentalism? Imagine, with the world now so close to us and new ideas so readily available, how genuinely radical (in the true sense) we could all be.

Whenever I work with young people – some whom may be very vulnerable through circumstance or poverty of opportunity – I always get them to stop and think about who they are: who they actually are and want to be.

Human beings – even the more solitary ones among us – are relational people, in that most of us construct images of ourselves in relation to what we think other people’s perceptions of us might be. For example, others consider me to be creative, talkative, and pretty ropey at DIY – I know this because different people tell me so – but does this mean that it’s true? It might not be, but those perceptions have become part of my identity and have helped form my behaviours. Online, our identities are more fluid, but still just as constructed and controlled. The most significant difference is that, as hard as it might be, we can switch it off! This is especially important when the images of themselves that some vulnerable young people get from the internet are negative, thanks to cyber-bullying and other problems related to self-esteem.

The children and young people who are at the highest risk of radicalisation are those looking for confirmation of who they are and what their consequential behaviours must be (possibly because adult influence has not been effective at providing that guidance). As the safest influencers in their lives, it’s our responsibility to get there first and to find a way to help them work this out. Let us be the ones to make our children into radical thinkers in the most tolerant, constructive, and innovative sense. Positive internet communities can help us do that.

Let’s reclaim the real meaning of radical: being innovative and thorough, and taking positive action, not reinforcing hate and violence. Let’s treasure and celebrate teenage fashion and musical tribes as a means of self-expression, because the alternatives can be devastating. Let’s keep talking about our values and our behaviours and what unites us, in both our physical and online spaces.

The biggest tool we have against malicious, nihilistic radicals – wherever they may be in the world – is our human capacity to be bigger, more positive, and more inclusive radicals than they are.

Interested in joining our Human Values Project? - click here

---

Richard Freeman the Director of always possible.

We support education providers, creative organisations, values-led business and charities with project development, organisational cultures, policy, leadership & resilience. Please visit alwayspossible.co.uk to see how we can support you.

This article was originally commissioned for Child Internet Safety magazine and was skillfully edited by Chris Middleton.