The future is ours: Young people and the inclusive city

Blossom-Ward, M; Hart, S; Kippen, R; Ralls, D; Rubani, N

doi:10.4324/9781003367758-40

The future is ours: Young people and the inclusive city

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Deborah Ralls ORCiD

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).

Abstract

In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, young people from The Horsfall created The Future Is Ours festival. The Horsfall is a gallery attached to 42nd Street, a mental health charity in Manchester (www.42ndstreet.org.uk/) which supports young people aged 11–25 years with their emotional well-being and mental health. The festival celebrated young people’s creativity and social action in the extremely challenging context of a global pandemic, featuring original artworks by over 130 young people shared online and on billboards and street posters across Manchester. By taking their artwork out onto the streets, young people were able to bypass bureaucratic barriers to participation and engage with their local communities directly, countering the situation where young people are not only unheard and unseen in local and national decision-making processes but are frequently discussed in deficit terms. In this chapter, three young people explain their contributions to the exhibition, the experiences that informed them and reactions to their work from the wider community. Rod Kippen, Creative Producer at 42nd Street, and Deborah Ralls from Newcastle University discuss the challenges and possibilities of creative activism in moving children and young people centre-stage in the defining and planning of participatory initiatives for inclusive cities.