In Conversation with the Merseyside Peer Action Collective
For this week’s episode of the Safe Spaces podcast Ella is joined by the incredible Peer Researchers behind Merseyside’s Peer Action Collective. The group are working to raise awareness of and eradicate youth violence by uplifting the voices of young people in the city and collating context based research around the root causes of youth violence and how we can help heal community wounds. You can find more about PAC at YPAS Liverpool under PAC.
Cover for the PAC podcast episode including an illustration of the group members and text reading ‘Comics Youth x Where are the Girlbands Safe Spaces Podcast in conversation with PAC’ the text is in bubble writing and on a light pink background with star, hearts, microphone and headphone motifs.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Hello and welcome to the Comics Youth x Where are the Girlbands Safe Spaces podcast, a space for conversations with local organisations and individuals working to make Merseyside and the wider North West a safer space.
The Peer Action Collective are an amazing group of young people working to research youth violence across Merseyside, and use the insight they get from this knowledge to create change within the city. Currently based at YPAS, the group are working to create a safer Merseyside in a youth led and well-informed way, listening to the voices of young people in the city around how youth violence has impacted them and how we can prevent it.
I have already had some incredible conversations with the group and so I am very excited to talk with them today so that you can hear straight from them the passion behind this project, why it is so important and the learning they have found so far around the issue of youth-violence.
Interview:
Ella:
So I’m here today with a whole range of lovely people! It’s so exciting to have you all in the space. It’d be fantastic if we could go round and introduce yourselves and maybe a bit about why you got involved with PAC?
Grace W:
Yeah of course! So I’m Grace Ward, I’m a PAC Peer Researcher. I got involved with PAC because it felt like a real tangible way that I could make a difference in my community and do so with other likeminded young people.
Lily:
Hi I’m Lily Grieves, I’m also a Peer Researcher. I found out about the PAC project through my Youth Voice group and I’ve seen a lot of youth violence in my area, so I thought it would be a brilliant way to make an impact and help people in the community who may not have a voice themselves.
Grace G:
Hi, so I’m Grace. Yeah so I got into PAC because I heard about it from family and I just thought basically just came in my lap and I was like oh okay great! Um, and I just thought, everyone’s always got like an issue with youth violence so I’m I’ve got like an opportunity to actually voice and do something about it and that’s what made me, I thought, I’m going to give this a try, and it’s not like the standard job either.
Cait:
Hi I’m Cait. I’m also a Peer Researcher (laughing). Yeah I joined because like, I was already a Young Ambassador with YPAS so I found out about it through that and just like doing that was just such a good way to make sure that my time was going towards doing something good instead of just like sitting at home. It felt like I was doing something good with my time, I was proud of what I was doing.
Keiron:
Hi, I’m Keiron. I pretty much got involved for similar reasons. I was already involved in YPAS and using their services and in their participation group and I kind of loved what they were doing, just kind of volunteering doing things to make a difference. So I thought this is a perfect opportunity for me to do what I love and also like this is my first job. You know it’s given me so much experience and so much skills that I never would have got otherwise so yeah.
Dean:
Hi, I’m Dean. I’m also a PAC Peer Researcher. Er, and kind of my experience is the same as a few of the others. Erm, I was basically involved in my Youth Cabinet group so I’ve basically done a lot of things around youth voice and themes like that, and this role came at a time when I was actually looking for a job myself and looking to get involved in more things so it kind of just came at the right time for me, and, er, as others have said I felt like it was a real opportunity for me to make real difference so yeah.
Megs:
So my names Megs. I’m a Peer Researcher and I wanted to be a Peer Researcher because I was just so excited to maybe like dive in and maybe just see what type of things as a society we can change to maybe reduce youth violence and what things we can work on as a team and, I just really wanted to hear what young people had to say and how they felt on the situation because it’s all good and great having my own opinions and I think we should, you know, change this because so and so, but really we need like data to try and tackle how we change things to improve society so I was just really excited to see if there was anything we could come up with.
Ella:
Well I’ve already given a sort of in a nutshell explanation of what PAC is, but it would be great to hear it from your perspective as people who are involved and the people who are working there, and the sort of initiative that you’re working on and researching.
Grace G:
So PAC first of all it stands for, Peer Action Collective. It’s a nation-wide project, however it does not cover Scotland, just England and Wales. So we cover ten different regions with the collective aim to reduce youth violence. So we’re covering Merseyside and we’re working under YPAS, and our title is ‘The Culture of Youth Violence in Merseyside’. There we go, I’ve remembered that one (laughing) and it’s from a young person’s perspective. We really want to elevate young people. We’re all young people here, and it’s just amazing that it’s youth-led, and that’s the main point that like grips people in.
Grace W:
Yeah. We want to empower young people through doing this so not only will they have the chance to have their voices raised through participating in research, they’ll also be able to take part in social action based on the research findings and hopefully be able to meet some new people, make a difference in their community, erm, and yeah hopefully just make Liverpool and Merseyside a fairer and safer place to live.
Megs:
I mean the Peer Action Collective it’s a £5.2 million programme, and it aims to give young people the chance to make their communities safer and fairer places to live.
Ella:
I’d love to hear a bit about what that research process is looking like for you because obviously research can come in so many different forms, and youth violence is such a broad topic and it impacts people in so many different ways. So, how has that research process been going for you all?
Lily:
It’s going quite well. To gather all our data we’re using an app called FAtiMA. It allows us to do interviews online, but we can also do them in person. At the moment we’re mainly focussing on online interviews but further down the line we’re going to be working on going in-person and doing focus groups. We’re looking at interviewing people aged 10-20 who then can, if they want to, stop there or they can move on and become a part of the social action.
Keiron:
I think, um, one thing I’d like to add is how we’re so focussed on making this as accessible as possible. We want to do as many different research practices as possible, whether that’s, you know, er, writing, speaking, creative methods to make sure everyone, as many people as possible, can get involved because you know some people aren’t as confident with writing or speaking so we want to make sure that they can still get involved as well, which is why we’re having so, like such a wide range of methods for them to get involved in.
Dean:
Yeah, and just to add to that as well, I think it’s about the methods but also about, erm, the places where we are finding young people and interviewing them. So you know we’ve got our partners, so erm, MYA, the LC Foundation and others who are recruiting young people for us, erm, so there are a lot of people who are behind us and working with us on this project, erm, and also we’re aiming to go into as many schools as we can, erm, just youth clubs, different settings where young people are, because I think a lot of the time with organisations the attitude is that some young people are hard to reach, and we really want to change that narrative so that we’re reaching out to those young people and making it our aim to, to be accessible to them.
Cait:
Yeah we’re putting in the effort to actually reach them instead of just being like ugh they’re hard to reach, aren’t they. It’s like where you’re going to reach them.
Grace W:
Yeah we’re going to where the young people are themselves, we’re not waiting for them to just come to us because it doesn’t work like that and it shouldn’t work like that. We need to provide opportunities for them and we don’t want to just be like preaching to the converted. We want to be speaking to as many different young people, from as many different backgrounds and places as possible, and you know to do that, we hope that the way that we’re conducting the research, will, you know, help to engage them. They can take out any answers that they don’t want, they can say, you know, oh no I really shouldn’t have said that can you please take that out and we’ll respect that and you know all the data is private, it will only be shared with us. The name won’t be put on it. It will go to some partners and the partners won’t know who it’s from, it will just be some experiences.
Dean:
And I have to say that the way we are conducting the research and you know trying to be as representative as possible of Merseyside and the whole of the Liverpool City Region can only be positive for everyone. It’s positive for the young people and it’s positive for us in our research because it means that we can create the most realistic picture, and erm, most realistic picture of the region to take into that national research and hopefully go towards some positive changes.
Grace W:
Yeah.
Lily:
Just sort of on the back of what Dean was saying, most data that you see in reports, it’s very London-centric, London? (laughing) It’s very London centric so we want to make sure that we can put Liverpool and Merseyside on the map. With how we’re doing the research, we’re making sure we’re reaching SEND young people, NEET young people, everyone from every different background you can imagine. We want to be as inclusive as possible.
Grace W:
Yeah just on the back of what Lily said, we did a literature review before we decided our research questions. That was really important to us to make sure we were doing something different and we weren’t replicating what was already out there because that’s not going to help anyone is it, just to reproduce the same data, and we found that not only are young people’s voices not represented when talking about youth violence but Merseyside as a whole isn’t represented. It’s very, you know, there’s a London model, there’s a Glasgow model, there’s a Manchester model and a Birmingham model, and considering we have, you know, such a big issue with things like county lines and homophobia and all these issues going on, why isn’t there a Merseyside model to do with youth violence? And that literature review has definitely been really crucial to us realising that.
Ella:
Even just you doing that review I feel like is so important because you can use that as evidence for institutions and organisations in the city to say actually like the resources aren’t there, like the work’s not being done, you know. I guess like you were saying before, often institutions have excuses for why they’re not doing things, like you know there’s already research around this issue, young people are difficult to reach, young people don’t want to talk about these issues, and you’re properly factually proving them wrong in those respects and saying actually no it’s not there, these are the reasons it needs to be there and look at all this engagement we’ve had across tonnes of different communities, and you know not only is it fantastic research for you, and will be really validating for the people you interview, but it really should set a precedent for other institutions as well.
Dean:
Yeah definitely, and I think, I’m not speaking for all of the others but, I think this is a recurring that’s come up for us, what else has been frustrating is the fact that there is a lot of work being done around this, and there’s different kind of organisations working on this, but a lot of the time there’s no joined up thinking, and what we want to do is collaborate as much as possible so that we can have one strategy, more of an integrated strategy, so that we can be as clear as possible in what we want to do.
Grace W:
Yeah, and we hope that just because PAC you know, officially ends in December this year, that it’s legacy lives on and that people are inspired by the work that we’ve done and you know, not only promoting that joined-up-thinking, but promoting to young people that you can have a voice, it’s your right to have a voice and get involved in things no matter where you’re from or what you’ve been through, you know, get up and get involved it’s a brilliant opportunity.
Grace G:
And it’s not just us collecting data, we’re actually getting the context to what goes on in young people’s lives in Merseyside and that is so important. Instead of somebody in a big office, like how many miles away, like “Ooo these statistics” and forming their own opinions about your life, you actually get a chance to speak up about what’s happening to you, what’s happening to your friends, what’s happening to your family, what’s happening to your community! And it’s just, like, it’s just astonishing that it hasn’t already happened.
Cait:
Yeah and we’re also like taking those statistics and then doing something with them rather than being like, “we’ve gathered all this information…here’s the information, that’s all we’re going to do, you figure it out” that kind of thing. Like, we’re going to get it and be like okay from this we’re going to do this piece of social action, this will spread awareness and it will hopefully have like a ripple effect.
Lily:
Yeah because when you think about it, people who are older they experience different issues, so what they might think is useful for young people now-a-days, it’s not always going to fit, it’s not always going to be accurate. We as young people, we know what we need, we see issues, we live them on a day-to-day basis, we’re the most qualified to sort of make that judgement on what we need as a community. So, being able to gather the voices of young people and ask them, “What do we need? What needs changing?” and we can take it to the higher ups who have the money and the ability to make the change that needs to be done.
Dean:
Yeah, you know what I think Lily has just summed up perfectly why peer research is such a powerful tool because we’re open about the fact we’re not ‘professionals’. We’ve received extensive training obviously because of what we’re doing, we’re going to be dealing with you know sensitive topics of course and, you know, handling people’s stories and everything. But, you know, at the same time, we do have that lived experience and I feel like academic research and professionals working alongside us has its place, but I think it can often feel like, for young people, that things are being imposed on them rather than people working with them. So I think that that’s what’s so refreshing about our project. It is really us working alongside the people that we’re interviewing and showing, you know, empowering them.
Megs:
So far we’ve had pancake projects, we’ve had little pilot projects where we’ve had our Peer Researchers going into schools and we’ve been talking to the young people and we’ve been, basically we’ve been doing trial runs on our questions and so far the data we’ve got back from these young people’s answers have just been amazing. I feel like young people aren’t given enough credit in how much they do pick up on their own surroundings, like, I feel as a child I was quite oblivious to a lot of what was going on, but the young people we’ve been communicating with were just incredibly smart, they were just clued in on so many things that I would have missed as a child so I feel like being a Peer Researcher and hearing all this data and being able to listen to what these young people have got to say has just been so overwhelming and so powerful for me because, like, if they can answer all of these questions with such brilliant answers why can there not be a change made. If they can answer these things so well and if they have all of these strong opinions then they can definitively be the ones to change you know they’re very inspiring to listen to.
Ella:
Definitely, and you were saying before how, the fact that you’re youth-led is so important, and it’s very much the ethos of Comics Youth as well, in a sense of, you know, firstly completely agree with what you’re saying in that we’re also a lived-experience organisation and we believe that everyone is an expert in their own experiences. People can study things as much as they want but they’ll never have the actual lived emotional experience of, you know, living through those things. They won’t have the full contextual picture like you were saying. You can read as many statistics as you like but you’re never going to know what that experience was like more than the people who’ve lived it, and I think the fact that you’re meeting the young people where they’re at, almost theory about the way you’re conducting your research and I also think it’s not only all these steps you’re taking but the fact that you are, you know, young people yourselves and you’re lived experience yourselves, will result in better interviews and more accurate evidence and representations of peoples’ experiences because they’ll feel safe telling those things to you.
Youth-led initiatives, like you were saying, it’s one of those things were, you know, you feel like perhaps you’re not as professional as other people, you don’t have the qualifications other people do, maybe you feel like you’re sort of fighting to be as heard as people, like you were saying, who have statistics and suits and all these sort of things but realistically you are the experts and the people who you’re interviewing are also the experts, and it’s these people who have power to change who need YOU. Do you know what I mean? Like they don’t know themselves, they need those statistics, they need that research, they need that context, and you’re the ones who can supply that. So as much as some people have the power, you actually have the answers to what that change needs to be.
It'd be lovely maybe to talk a bit more about that, about why you feel that it’s so important to centre the experiences of young people.
Megs:
Oh absolutely. I think it’s incredibly important to have the young people front and centre of this project because I mean they are the heart and soul of where we want to start, where we want to be seeing our changes. We want to help them. We want to be making their communities safer. I believe that children and young people definitely have the data that we absolutely need, erm, and I think as well having it youth led, of course we have guidance from our mentors and stuff like that but having the actual interviews and stuff hosted by young people, I think it definitely removes an aspect of possible suggested tokenism, like, because perhaps there have been things where adults have tried to speak to young people about certain issues and it’s, you know, maybe nothing’s been done about it and it’s felt tokenistic, and maybe they haven’t felt as listened to. We would like to approach the young people in a very equal way to say, ‘okay, we’re friendly, please talk to us, please let us listen to what you’ve got to say, your answers are very important to us’, like, yeah, I think having this project youth-led is just very, it’s nothing I’ve ever heard of before, which is really exciting. It’s nothing that, you know, I didn’t have access to anything like this when I was in high school or primary school so, I think being able to offer something youth-led to the young people of today is, it’s very exciting really.
Ella:
Not only will you be getting that data and that research like you were saying that’s so important to tackling youth violence in Merseyside, but you’re also just generally empowering the young people that you’re talking to and showing them that their voices, are valid, that they’re important, that what they have to say has value, and also setting a really nice example as young people yourselves that young people can take action and can be listened to, so it’s absolutely fantastic to see.
Megs:
Oh absolutely. I absolutely love that you’ve just made that point because if we can end this project and just have even a couple of young people inspired to raise their voice on issues they feel passionate about, amazing, that’s absolutely amazing we would love that. I think me personally joining the PAC project and being, you know, employed by YPAS, I feel very listened to and I do feel like my feelings are acknowledged and that’s just a lovely feeling because I think growing up we’re taught kind of, you know, you’re going to hate your first couple of jobs but you’ll find a job that you love when you’re older and you’re more settled and stuff like that but I absolutely love being a Peer Researcher I feel very valued. I feel like if I bring up an issue or something I’d like to speak about its listened and it’s acknowledged so I think having the interviews youth-led and having the media, the things that we put out in the media as showing young people’s faces and stuff like that I think it’s, I hope it’s very inspiring to young people, because their voices are the voices we want to be hearing right now. This is the whole reason we’re doing this right now, we want their communities safer and we want them to be listened to and acknowledged.
Ella:
Definitely and I guess as well you’re also setting a precedent and saying to other organisations that they should have youth-led elements of their research too. You know, like you said, sometimes young people are interviewed or there’s an element of involvement of young people but usually it does feel quite tokenistic and like nothing’s really going to be done from that sort of like one time that a young person’s been involved. So, do you feel like you’re setting an example for other institutions that they should really value the voices of young people too?
Megs:
Oh I really hope so. I would love to hear about other projects being youth-led and I would love to hear about, you know, other young peoples’ voices being listened to and acknowledged because I just think like, I’m a young person and I didn’t fully acknowledge how much younger people know about issues around them because when I was their age I didn’t acknowledge what was around me, I was quite oblivious. So if I can be a young person and I can be so oblivious to the great brains around me then what are other big companies missing? What are other things that are being left out of the conversation? Erm, I really hope that other places and other erm companies and organisations can, you know, approach young people with open ears really. I would love for there to be more young people in the organisations and communities around us.
Lily:
I mean I’m gonna jump in here, erm, I’ve done Youth Voice for years, I’m a part of a Voice group and we’ve done work prior but something that you see no matter what project you are in is how prevalent youth voice is. Young people have the power to do so much, they have the ability to make a change so we want to make sure that they have that capability that they have the support to do that. Something that I know we intend on doing is we have our social medias, we want to make sure that we’re giving young people updates, we’re giving them availability to see what’s going on so that way they know what’s happening to their answers, they know where they’ve gone, they know what’s happening to it. We make sure informed consent is a priority, because it makes sure that those young people, they understand what’s going on but they can see where it’s going, they can follow the journey, and they’re more likely to get involved in stuff like that again because they know okay I got involved in that project and this is the outcome that came from it, so what would happen if I joined that project?
Keiron:
I think young people are constantly underestimated you know and a lot of the time when projects are ‘youth-led’, they’re not actually, you know, but I feel like this is and I feel like we are running this project which is really cool and when we’re working with young people they’re going to be the ones who are influencing policy and making a difference you know, and I think that’s really important because young people are constantly looked down upon and thought that they’re making trouble, when in reality they just want to make a difference and there’s no way for them to do that, and there’s nowhere for them to go and there’s nothing for them to do, but that’s on the people that are higher up and we’re hoping that we can make a difference.
Dean:
I definitely agree with Keiron about this project being truly youth-led because like I said I’ve been, like Lily has as well, I’ve been in Youth Voice for a while and I’m not saying that in the other projects it wasn’t youth-led like, but I do think that sometimes organisations ask for youth representation and they’ll have like maybe one person on a board or that sort of thing or one person going to one meeting and nothing ever gets fed-back. Whereas with this there’s 13 of us, we’ve been employed, so we are YPAS employees and we’re respected as such and we’re really empowered to speak to other young people and find out their experiences and also in terms of censoring the other young peoples’ experiences who we’re interviewing, I think it’s really, like Lily was touching on, we’ve said to people you know you can be an interview participant and a changemaker or you can do one or the other like there’s no pressure but we’re really encouraging people to go forward with us in the project and see where it takes us.
Grace W:
I think it’s just viewing young people as citizens as well and not as like people who are separate from the rest of the community and not taking you know, a paternalistic ‘oh they need to be looked after’ view and like Keiron said before, you know we saw last summer young people being like actively pushed out of communal places and you know the way perspectives limit how we treat them and that’s something you know we’re really keen to change through this project by raising their voices hopefully other people will see that you know young people aren’t any different to adults, they’re not any less than, they don’t think any differently, they experience the same problems and you know hopefully if we start treating young people better some of the problems that we deal with in adulthood might not be as big of a deal, not deal but issue, anymore because they’ll have been dealt with in childhood because we just accept things when they shouldn’t be accepted and I don’t know why we do that.
Keiron:
Yeah I think young people as well, erm, I guess their views aren’t really respected as much, maybe because adults don’t think they might know what’s wrong. But I think just touching on, we went into schools just before Christmas to talk to some 10/11 year olds and the amount they knew about youth violence was just incredible, and like they talked so openly about it and I think that really proved to us what I think we all already knew which was that young people know a lot more than professionals think they do.
Grace G:
Yeah, I think the stigma needs to be like lost around young people. We are able, we are capable, and we have a lot to say. Even just generational differences like even the social media we use, the type of language we use, is very different from say what a professional would use and that is such key information to understanding what young people are talking about, what are the issues, because if you can’t understand us then how can you do change at all? So you know what I’m so glad we took part in this because we were respected as professionals we had those conversations with our partners and we hope that ethos reflects in how we talk to our peers, our young people, and we really hope that that message comes across that we want to listen to you and your voice is important.
Ella:
Yeah I think that’s so important and it’s something that I’ve found as well in my experience of being like a young person who’s in professional spaces. Even things like training, I’ve attended training where you can just tell no one in the room, including the person delivering the training has any idea what they’re talking about. They’re talking about things like social media in hypothetical terms, they don’t actually know what it is, do you know what I mean. Things that happen online, they’ve never had any experience of it, so they’re just talking about it as, like you were saying before, statistics without context. There’s no understanding of like, you know like you were saying, these behaviours might be happening but why are they happening? Why are people doing those things? What’s leading people to take those actions? Why isn’t it being prevented? What happens after that? What’s going on with the families around them? It’s just the bare minimum context and then saying to people, ‘okay, so this many things are happening in the community, this is bad.’ There’s been many times where I’ve been at training and I’ve had to put my hand up to be like, ‘can I just explain like what that is’, do you know what I mean and give context to why that might be happening and also like maybe why you shouldn’t say that to the young person that you’re working with or maybe this is a better way to say it, and this is why having youth-led projects is so important because you’re on like an equal parr with other professionals in your field so you have that space to elevate the voices of young people who don’t get listened to.
So I think it’s amazing what you’re doing and like you said even things like language are so important, like the way you deliver your interviews as young people, like I was saying before, you’re going to get so much more of an authentic response from the people you interview because they’re going to know that you’re resonating with what they’re saying, and there’s not a level of judgement around what they’re saying either. So I think that’s incredibly important and a really key thing I think Keiron said as well is it’s not only like you were saying Grace that young people experience the same challenges as adults, but actually young people know more than professionals. I think it’s really important what you’re doing because you’re showing that the answers are there and you’re giving the answers as well. You’re obviously doing the research now, but what your aims are with PAC going forward?
Megs:
I’ve got so many hopes and so many wishes. I think my immediate aims with PAC going forward is that we are able to reach out to more young people, we’re able to communicate and have that open communication with young people. I hope that what we’re saying and the questions we ask go down well with the young people. We had a very positive response from the pilot project. I’m hoping we can, we can raise the PAC project in like a very positive light and that we can, we can hopefully have young people feel comfortable enough to speak to us and to talk about things that they may not have thought about and to answer the questions that they may not have thought about so, yeah I’m very excited to communicate with young people. We’re all going to be hosting interviews soon so I’m really looking forward to that.
Dean:
A lot of our aims I feel like people would be like, ‘oh it’s pie in the sky’, because we’re like, essentially we want to eradicate youth violence that’s our aim, but obviously we recognise that that’s a challenge to say the least. What we’re really interested in doing is tackling the causes of youth violence because I think a lot of people focus on the acts of youth violence themselves, and whilst that’s important I think it’s quite simplistic. What we’re looking into is things like poverty, mental health, issues like that which feed into youth violence and you know I think, I think a positive thing about our project is that, erm, you know, there’s 13 of us and we’re from all across the Liverpool City Region. We’ve got people from Liverpool, Knowsley, St. Helens, Walton, the Wirral, erm, so all over, and we recognise the issues within our own communities, the differences and similarities, erm, and we hope that going forward we can, I know it’s a word that’s come up a lot but empower, erm, young people going forward because, you know, this is a project that has a fixed kind of end date, but we hope that, like Grace said, we can leave a bit of a legacy and keep that positive work going forward.
Keiron:
I have a personal aim for myself during the project for myself and then I have kind of a group aim for what I want the project to achieve. So I think personally, I want to, you know I feel like I’ve developed a lot since I’ve started this project in my confidence, doing a podcast is something I never thought I’d be able to do like a year ago, so the fact that I’m sat here is amazing. Erm, so just for me to keep developing, and keep learning new skills and working with just amazing colleagues that I have just the best time with. So that’s my personal aim, and as a project I think, you know, it’s just about making sure that once this project ends it doesn’t just stop with no lasting impact you know. There’s got to be something after it and I think we’re really keen in making sure there is and that the young people’s voices aren’t just lost after the project ends and it keeps going and it does make a difference, and my aim is that it makes a difference even if it’s just for one young person. You know if it helps one young person I think it’s worth it.
Cait:
Yeah kind of relating to what like Keiron said is just like we all started and so many of us in that first meeting we were talking about like what we were nervous about and so many of us were just like, we don’t know if we’re professional enough or just good enough to do this job, and like as time has gone on we’ve all kind of realised like ah no we are amazing! (laughing) Like, we’re great at this, we are professionals and like same as Keiron I’d never thought, if you’d have told me like a year ago that I’d be sitting doing a podcast I’d have just been like ‘ha!’.
Grace W:
I think like main project aims though are, maybe these are mine but hopefully others share them as well, it’s things we’ve touched on before like breaking stigma and perceptions about young people and youth violence, and it’s about looking at not just young people themselves but you know like the root causes of youth violence and the stigma that surrounds those causes like you mentioned before. I think it’s bringing more joined together working rather than the same, same projects and pieces of work being reproduced and replicated. We don’t want people to be working in separate spheres anymore because it’s just not productive. Erm, we, you know, we want young people to know what services are out there for them and how they can access them and you know we hope to create more spaces for young people to access and we hoped that we can provide young people with an opportunity to get involved in something that maybe they’ve not been involved in before because I know that when I was in school, if you weren’t sporty or if you weren’t like you weren’t into performing arts…
Dean:
It’s like what is there to do?
Grace W:
Yeah! What is there to do exactly! And I just hope that there’s young people out there who look at this and will go oh yeah I want to get involved in that. Maybe just to meet new people, if it’s not to meet some new people to make a difference, if it’s not to do that just to get some experience on their CV. I just think it’s so beneficial and it can upskill young people in so many different ways.
Dean:
I think it’s really crucial that we’re treating people and their experience with respect, we’re not treating them as statistics which like you said, a lot of projects do. It’s like you said Grace we’re looking into the context which I think is really important.
Grace W:
And just to add, it’s bringing young people into professional spaces and like we talked about before, innovating those professional spaces. Like you said before you know why, why does the way we work have to be like this, why can’t young people be in the space more often, and I feel like when we bring professionals and young people together, something magical can happen. I know some professionals are quite hesitant right now and they don’t know how to work with young people and we do see that a lot, but I think once you’ve broken down those barriers and you’ve seen what young people can do, maybe they’ve learned something from young people as well after spending some time with them, that’s a big change in itself isn’t it.
Dean:
Yeah, definitely.
Grace W:
And it’s not to do with youth violence it’s to do with structures and I think that could be, that could be brilliant.
Lily:
It’s a shop phrase but every little helps. Even if it makes a difference to one person there’s so much that changes. I mean the fact that we’ve started this project it’s bringing up conversations about it, it’s bringing these situations up to light whereas in most cases and most areas they’ve been swept under the rug, they’ve been hidden away, it’s like, ‘oh no we don’t have those problems’, it’s being brought out which is something I know is one of my aims is making sure that these problems are visible and that we, because if, they’re not there if you don’t see them and you can’t make a change on them. So bringing them up into the light means that we can make a change and we each have our own individual goals and we’ve all got our collective group goal which is just plain and simple, we want to make a change.
Grace G:
Ah, this is my perspective but I feel like with young people, you’re told like ah no you can’t do that, we’ve already proven that we can actually do this, we can be in a professional environment. We want to prove to young people, when hopefully they get involved with some social action (laughing), they can be confident, they can do these things by themselves and they don’t actually need to rely so much on these organisations and waiting until you’re done with your education to step into these roles and get this sort of erm, practice in shall we say (laughing) and experience and you can get involved and it’s open to everyone it’s not just, you know we’re not just targeting the really confident people you know we want to speak to everyone, we want to hear everyone’s voice, and that’s my goal, to hear peoples’ voices who usually wouldn’t go out of their comfort zone because that is so impactful and I hope that they learn you know just simple skills like speaking in front of people, like that’s so daunting for I think young people of this day and age just speaking in front of people is like, oh my gosh a stress (laughing).
Dean:
And I think it’s like if we can all do it, then why can, why can any other young person in Merseyside not do it, and I think for our project in terms of the motivation for what we want to achieve, I think it’s erm, it’s all about how timely the issue is. You know like even since we’ve started the project back in September there always seems to be news stories now within the city and within the city region, you know there’s always an instance of youth violence happening, erm, that we feel like we have to address and talk about. Erm, so I feel like the timing is now, like we need to do something now, you can’t wait.
Grace W:
I know if you watch our co-op video which we made in the September or the October when we started, Lu our line-manager said that 10 years ago if a young person was stabbed it would have been big news, it would have been everywhere.
Dean:
And now it’s normalised.
Grace W:
And now it’s normal. Yeah, and when she said that and when I watched that video it gave me goosebumps because I was like well why are we accepting it, you know, how have we got to this stage where youth violence is normal and you know, to add to that, what does that say about the way that we view young people if we’re just letting it happen.
Ella:
Definitely, and I think, it was something I was going to mention before actually, something which often goes wrong in changemaking initiatives is that, basically what you were saying at the start of assuming context, because things change all the time. The communities’ needs change all the time, people’s experiences change all the time, and just using a set of statistics that were gathered maybe a couple of years ago without any lived experience context to go with it, you’re not ever going to have a picture of what the experience is, and like you were saying the time is always now, in the future the time will also be now, because you always need to be involved in what’s happening in the present moment, and that’s definitely what you’re doing and I think like your aims of having a legacy are already definitely being achieved because you are an example now to other organisations and institutions now of best practice and, you know, there’s no excuse now. Like all the excuses we spoke about before? You’ve disproved that they’re an excuse or they’re a roadblock getting in the way. ‘Oh we can’t get enough young people to engage’, go to them! It’s not like there’s not young people involved, go and ask them! Do you know what I mean?
Lily:
You just need to know the right places to go. Don’t just go and look in schools because you’re only reaching one demographic. You have to go everywhere, and if you look at the UN’s UN Rights of a Child, it is one of our amendments, young people have a right to a voice on issues that affect them. That’s why these projects like this exist because we have to make sure that we’re drawing their voices out, which is why when we’re advertising we’re using social media but we’re also having posters in youth hubs, schools, wherever we can reach so that way we’re reaching everyone.
Ella:
I guess to finish off, are there any sorts of calls to action or anything you’d like to ask of the audience who are listening today in terms of how they can support you and your needs?
Dean:
I think it’s just get involved in any way that you can, whether that’s as a changemaker or a research participate.
Grace W:
Yeah and really respect young peoples’ rights and take us seriously. Let us into your spaces, let us, let us show you what we can do because, you know, some of the work that I’ve seen from young people it is just amazing.
Lily:
Yeah. You can achieve anything you put your mind to so don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
Grace G:
Go onto the YPAS website and then go onto ‘get involved’ and a drop-down bar will appear and there is the PAC Peer Researchers. It will give you a bit more information and also videos, a LinkTree as well.
Lily:
Yeah we have a LinkTree as well it is YPAS Merseyside PAC which has a link to both of our videos, YPAS social media where we advertise, the sign up survey and so much more.
Keiron:
Yeah I think just at least like have a look and I know that you might be nervous about getting involved but I promise you, you won’t regret it and you’ll learn so many new skills if you become a changemaker and it will make a difference to you as well as other young people and I think you’ll get so much out of it and also to professionals, just look at what we can do as young people, trust young people, like we can do more than you think.
Cait:
Yeah and if you are nervous especially just look at us because when we started, or at least when I started I just like did not feel like I was right for the role, like I wasn’t going to apply until one of our managers was like no you should apply and I was like, okay. We will also be there and we have gone through this experience of like am I good enough to do this, I don’t know, and then learning that no, we are and there’s like, like Lily said, there’s nothing that you can’t achieve if you put your mind to it. So like, if you’re a bit nervous we’re here, we were nervous too, like, you are not alone, you are never going to be alone, there’s always going to be someone with the same feelings about youth violence or about like being able to talk over the phone, either way like we will relate to you, you’re not alone.
Grace W:
It will be fun. The social action especially will be fun. It will be creative, it will be different, it will be, it will be building into something big and I know that sounds scary, and it might sound scary and that’s absolutely fine but like Cait said, you’re not alone, we’re in this together and we’re all young people and we just take it step-by-step, little steps. We don’t do anything too fast so, I’d just say that, we just go with the flow and see what comes our way and see who we can reach out to, and to professionals who are working with young people, just pass this opportunity on, you know it is so beneficial to the young people that you’re working with, it can open so many doors.
A massive thank you to the amazing young people at the Peer Action Collective, raising awareness of youth violence in Merseyside and working with young people to have their voices heard.
The song of the week is ‘It’s Right’ by Tiki, a song which gives an honest depiction of how we can blame ourselves for falling into difficult situations. With beautiful vocals and paired back piano that builds with harmonies that immediately evoke feeling, this song is a beautiful and a truthful one. In a world where it can be so difficult to speak about the complex and nuanced challenges we face, this song is empowering in the way it navigates being let down, confused, and finding your feelings shifting in all different places beyond your control. We hope you enjoy!
Tiki - It’s Right
We are Ella and Eve from Where are the Girlbands working in collaboration with Comics Youth to bring you interviews with local organisations and individuals who create safe spaces. You can find us on Instagram as @wherearethegirlbands where we celebrate women in music and discuss how to make local music scenes more accessible for everyone through reviews, video series, interviews and events! You can find more about Comics Youth on Instagram at @comicsyouth or via the website comicsyouth.co.uk. Comics Youth is a youth led organisation that aims to empower youth across the Liverpool City Region to flourish from the margins of society, creating safe spaces where young people can harness their own narratives and find confidence within a creative community. Comics Youth provide a range of creative services designed to support and amplify the often diminished voices of young people, from zine creation to youth led publishing hubs and projects such as this podcast which highlights the voices of those working within our community to create safe spaces! Thanks for listening.