BEING INVOLVED: EDUCATE, AGITATE, ORGANISE!

This sticky giving information about how you can be involved in the campaign – notice of meetings, social networking opportunities – will always be the first item on the Blog. For the latest posting of news and opinion scroll down!

Reports from the regional meetings will be put on a separate page,  REGIONAL REPORTS – click on the link in the right hand column. Try to have a look as they give a real feel for how things are growing.

LATEST NEWS FROM THE IN DEFENCE OF YOUTH WORK CAMPAIGN

IN DEFENCE OF YOUTH WORK NATIONAL CONFERENCE

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 11TH, 2010 FROM 11.00 A.M. – 4.15 P.M.

THE DIDSBURY CAMPUS, MANCHESTER METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY

PRE-CONFERENCE INFORMATION AND RESOURCES

Copy of the e-mail sent to all so far registered. It’s still not too late to turn up!

You will find below a range of materials related to the conference, which I will explain further. However firstly we need to address the vital issues of transport, the venue and food.

Transport

In terms of getting to Didsbury see http://www.mmu.ac.uk/travel/didsbury/

The 42 and 142 buses run every 10 minutes from Piccadilly Gardens in the centre of Manchester. If you are coming by train book through to East Didsbury station, which is five minutes walk away from the campus.

The main worry is that if you are coming by car you will find parking difficult. There is a PAY and DISPLAY at the campus, but it is full by 9.00 a.m. There is also a PAY and DISPLAY behind the Cafe Rouge on Wilmslow Road. People do park in surrounding streets, but the places fill up fast. Another alternative is to consider Park and Ride. It has been suggested that if you are coming by motorway you could use the PARK and Ride scheme from the LADYWELL Metrolink near Salford, but this does mean a metro to Piccadilly, then a bus – another 40 minutes.

IMPORTANT FOR MINI-BUS GROUPS : If you are bringing a contingent by bus, let me know urgently the drivers name and registration number of vehicle. We are trying to see if we can reserve a few places for these larger vehicles, but not at all certain.

Venue

The conference will be held in the Assembly Hall of the Simon building – see http://www.mmu.ac.uk/travel/maps/mmu_maps_didsbury.pdf

Registration will take place in the Hall, where we will also collect your £5 conference fee. The Campaign has no money, which is the necessary price to pay for being proudly and critically independent. But your fiver will be most welcome in beginning to build up a measure of financial resource – just to pay the basics.

Food

After much agitated, indigestion-inducing discussion we are asking you to bring your own lunch. The college canteen is unable to cope with 100 plus folk descending upon it across the space of 45 minutes. However tea, coffee and water will be provided during lunch in the Hall itself, which should allow us to eat, drink, mingle and be refreshed before the afternoon session. We will not be putting on drinks before we kick off at 11.00 a.m. If you get to Didsbury early it will be fine to use the college canteen, but, if you are pushed for time, best to bring your own liquid.

Time will be precious

This agonising about transport and butties is bound up intimately with worrying about how much we are trying to achieve in the day under the pressure of time. So we will be ignoring one of our most deeply held Youth Work cultural norms by starting on time. Anti-Social Behavioural Orders will be issued to late arrivals! Joking aside and we know some folk are coming from the corners of the Isles, it will be a brilliant start to the day if you can make it on time.

The Conference Business

Below you will find a number of attachments related to the immediate business of the day:

1.  Outline of the Day, February 11

2. A list of Questions to be pondered – suggested by the speakers introducing sessions in both the morning and afternoon.

3. What We Stand For A suggested Campaign statement of purpose based on the Open Letter and suggestions from the NE steering group, CYWU and Bernard Davies. If you have any amendments, please put these in writing and hand them in by 1.00 p.m. on the day. In putting this forward we have left off the name of the Campaign. At this juncture we have received four suggestions:

IN DEFENCE OF YOUTH WORK
DEVELOPING AND DEFENDING YOUTH WORK
THE CAMPAIGN FOR A DEMOCRATIC YOUTH WORK
THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF YOUTH WORKERS

4. A motion to the conference from CYWU calling upon the Campaign to revive National Youth Work Week

5. A letter of welcome and support from CYWU.

We know you are run off your feet, but if you can look at this stuff it will be really helpful. At bottom you need to print off the above attachments before coming to conference

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In addition we add below a range of background reading, which will be of great value and interest, whether you dip into it before or after the conference.

6. in defence of youth work briefing – a CYWU perspective

7. UNISON motion in support of the Campaign

8. A definition of Neo-Liberalism and its consequences for Youth Work by Doug Nicholls.

9. The North-East Region’s DEVELOPING AND DEFENDING YOUTH WORK pamphlet.

10. After Targets. What? Thoughts from Bernard Davies.

11. The Great Youth Work Heist Mutterings from the coal-face by Lenny Sellars.

12. Youth Work Prospects: Back to the Future - an extract by Janet Batsleer from a forthcoming book, What is Youth Work. edited by Batsleer, J. and Davies, B. to be published by Learning Matters.

13. Jean Spence’s eloquent defence of intellectual activity in Defence of Youth Work, July, Leeds.

14. YOUTH WORK VALUES Help or Hindrance – the transcript of a contribution to a London IDYW meeting by Tony Taylor.

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At the end of the conference we hope to be approving a Campaign Steering Group, who will guide us through to the proposed late Autumn/Winter conference. Obviously it would be great if such a group reflects the diversity of the Campaign’s support. Thus we are asking you to consider putting people forward to serve on the Group. Names to be handed in to the platform by 1.00 p.m. on the day.

I suspect this enough for now – just hoping I’ve forgotten ‘nowt’.

In the end it is important to stress that the success or otherwise of the conference is down to all of us. It will not be a slick, stage-managed affair, where you can sit passively pissed off. It will be unpredictable, creative and positive, provided we all muck in.

I’ll be checking messages through till Tuesday night, but after that I’ll be neither use nor ornament.

Looking forward a bit anxiously to seeing you all soon

Best Wishes

Tony Taylor at tonymtaylor@gmail.com

Democracy not Tyranny at Work : Independent Action

Notice of  a National Coalition for Independent Action conference in Nottingham on February 27. The Coalition’s challenge is:

Let’s create our own ways of managing

via Democracy not Tyranny at Work : Independent Action.

The Youth Work Heist

Encouraging critical thoughts from our supporters is high on the list of the Campaign’s concerns. Thus we are really pleased to post two challenging responses from workers still immersed in the ‘muck and bullets’ of practice.

Lenny’s piece begins:

So… I attended the Federation for Detached Youth Work Conference at Wigan in November last year and I must declare that I became increasingly charged throughout the weekend with a delightful positivity and felt an unusual level of intense inspiration from the radiant enthusiasm and passion of the guest speakers and other attendees. And then Tom Wylie spoke. He charged youth work purists with being hopeless romantics and scoffed at the thought that there was any value in the convivial relationship between youth worker and young person. My positivity plummeted and my hope wilted with every word that fell from his lips. There seemed to be a cruel irony in that a conference with the theme “Positive About The Street” should end with such a negative tone.

I get the feeling that I’ve been climbing a mountain for fifteen years only to find that the architects of social policy have built another mountain on top, twice as big and twice as steep. Metaphorically the mountain represents the daily grind of wading, chest-high through the formalised social control that is currently trading under the title of youth work^©. I’ve got my own vision of the summit and the clarity is startling. But that’s just a vision. The reality is a jumbled mess of strategic clichés.

Read the whole and Lenny’s suggestions for the future: The Great YW Heist

Meanwhile Steve in two pieces, Thatcher,_Blair_and_all_that_jazz and YOUTH_WORK – to be or not to be blurts out, to use his own phrase, his thoughts on the individualising imperative of the last 30 years and the state of Youth Work today.

Meanwhile, youth workers, and many others, dare to do youth work because they are working with young people. Recent figures say approx. 2800 of approx. 8500 full-time youth workers are JNC qualified. I was trained to work with young people informally to encourage their participation in the practices necessary for everyday living as part of a community.

I wasn`t trained to label young people so as to prescribe a set course of action to remove their mistakes and make them a model citizen. Whilst this has alluring tentacles its premise is faulty except for some young people(human beings) who may respond to this approach.

Both Lenny and Steve would love to get responses, to have you join in the debate. All of us need one another’s help in  escaping the trap of passivity, in refusing to keep our gobs shut.

Jobs in Birmingham Threatened

Around 1,300 early years and youth services jobs in Birmingham are under threat as part of a council wide reorganisation.

Read more at  Birmingham Threatened.

Victory in Oxfordshire,but the Fight continues

Doug Nicholls reports that:

Campaigning by Unite/CYWU led to great public outcry in Oxfordshire when people realised that the Conservative Council was proposing a cut of £2.3 million to youth work across the County. Determined opposition means that this proposal has now been withdrawn. Unite/CYWU members in the Council are delighted with the victory, but they are maintaining a work to rule and  a preparedness for strike action against attempts to reduce youth mentoring services and to attack JNC terms and conditions in that part of the service.

It shows the simple truth that where we are united and strong, youth work is defended the best.

Also, youth workers in Coventry are entering their eighth week of industrial action next week with an escalation of action and a strike day on 12^th January.

Successes are few and far between. So this is certainly cause for cautious celebration.