Doing things differently: Young people and governance
by Kamina Walton
In April I was lucky enough to attend the ‘Doing Things Differently – State of The Nation 2’ event in partnership with Bristol City Council at the Bristol Museum. Following up on a similar event held in 2016 the focus was to ask, are we any closer to inclusion? There was a revisiting of the Doing Things Differently Manifesto, and an intention to reinvigorate conversations about equality in the arts.
A range of individuals from different cultural institutions in the city were invited to consider what we as artists, cultural leaders and gatekeepers can do to move towards a more equal and diverse cultural sector. Through participating in a number of talks, exercises and workshops, we were encouraged to interrogate what we currently do and what we can be doing differently to make the arts more accessible.
As part of the event, Rising, alongside one of our youth board members, Euella Jackson, was invited to offer a provocation via two roundtable discussion groups. The brief was simple; create a challenge for your participants in the workshop that could help them create practical actions that they could implement in their own practice or organisation.
When thinking about how best to approach this and what challenge would bring out the best in the participating organisations, instead of looking outward for inspiration, we decided to look inwards at Rising to ask ‘What Were We Doing Differently that we could share?’.
What are we doing that we could share to benefit the rest of the cultural sector and those outside of it?
There are many things that we are doing differently. We’re not just an arts agency. We are all about creating paid jobs and opportunities for young artists. We’re committed to reaching young people in those parts of Bristol who don’t get much cultural engagement through ‘Whose Culture?’. We serve to be a bridge between young people and cultural institutions. We host a range of events, workshops and mentorship opportunities for young creatives. But one of the things that sets us apart from other organisations is that the young people that we work with are also key decision-makers in the future of Rising. 1 in 3 of our Directors and 50% of our Advisory Board is under the age of 25. We have a Youth Board who have created a ten-year plan for Rising’s strategic and future development. Young people co-curate the services that we provide to ensure that we are meeting their needs consistently.
Why young people and governance?
We strongly believe that young people should be involved in the governance of organisations. Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child gives those aged under 18 the right to have their say and views taken into account on decisions that affect them—but we don’t see this manifesting in the cultural sector or society as a whole. According to Participation Works, charities’ Boards are dominated by older people; despite making up 12% of the UK’s population, 18-24 year olds account for less than 0.5% of all charity trustees.
So, in our workshop, we challenged our participants to imagine that they had young people on their board and to explore what that would look like in their organisations. We encouraged them to be creative, to throw away the rule book and to embrace the possibility and potential that young people can bring. We briefly discussed the levels of engagement that each organisation had with young people and the barriers within their own institutions that may prevent young people from being involved in governance. We referred to young people as future leaders, with a wealth of knowledge and expertise to bring fresh perspectives and ideas.
Although each organisation had their own quirks, some notable barriers kept cropping up:
Time
Training
The culture of Board meetings
Not being able to recruit/retain young people
Yet—if you are an organisation working with young people the benefits of involving them directly in the governance include:
Your organisation becoming better equipped to meet the young people’s needs
Young people respecting and engaging with any decisions that are made when they’re directly involved in consultation
Bringing a sense of legitimacy to an organisation
In the creative sector, young people and governance have been on the back-burner for some time, but this event has been the trigger to make us realise that there is a real appetite for involving young people in this way. However, organisations are looking for training, advice and support on how to make this happen.
How can we help make youth governance work for you?
So, what next? We’ve developed a new package called ‘OnBoard’ that offers training for cultural sector staff so that they can understand how best to support young people in governance within their own organisation. This may involve reviewing their own practices and processes; reconsidering where and when meetings are held to make them more accessible; encouraging and supporting diversity and equality; acknowledging young people’s skills and experiences—we will encourage a cluster of these organisations to come together to share the training costs.
Alongside this, we will support and train a group of young people who are really interested in taking on governance roles. These young leaders will then form a ready-made network of young professionals who can and will support each other in these positions, with ongoing support from Rising. In this way, we will ensure that the organisations involved don’t feel they’ve got to do all the work on their own.
Diversity is a key aspect of good governance, and the young people of today are the leaders of the future, providing new talent and fresh perspectives. Rising believes that by combining these two elements and genuinely including young people as advisors, Board members and trustees, there is the potential to re-energise aspects of Bristol’s cultural sector and give voice to the sections of the community who really need to be heard.
If you’d like to find out more about our ‘OnBoard’ training offer for organisations please drop me an email at: kamina@rising.org.uk
Thanks for reading.
Kamina, Team Rising