Connecting youth with geographic communities: youth organisations and group identities in the UK during the twentieth century

The project aims to understand the role played by youth organisations in connecting young people to various kinds of community, geographically defined. Youth organisations enable young people to develop strong and positive connections with local communities, most clearly through their promotion of an ethos of an active local citizenship (Kearns 1995). Youth organisations also help a connection to be forged between young people and the imagined community of the nation (Anderson 1983). Finally, youth organisations also contribute to the promotion of connections between young people and international or global communities. While youth organisations have been active in shaping community engagement at these three different scales, part of the significance of youth organisations is the way in which they reinforce important connections between these scales.

Youth organisations, moreover, have played this role over a long period. The history of youth organisations in the UK has been illuminated in a number of studies (e.g. Springhall 1977; Proctor 2002; Prynn 1983) and yet, these studies are limited in scope. First, they have not examined explicitly the role played by youth organisations in shaping the connections between young people and different kinds of political and cultural community. Second, these studies have been largely Anglocentric studies of youth organisations associated with a British state project. Less attention has been directed towards youth organisations, which have challenged dominant state projects (cf. Löffler 2006; Prynn 1983). Third, studies of youth organisations have also tended to focus on the period before 1939 (e.g. Springhall 1977). Few studies have examined how youth organisations have mediated the relationship between young people and different kinds of community in the period after 1945. Finally, very few studies to date have examined how youth organisations seek to overcome - or sometimes succeed in reflecting or promoting - community tensions and subdivisions at different scales (although see Mills 2009).

Given this background, the project's aims are to:

1. Examine the academic and policy literature that has elaborated on the role played by youth organisations in reflecting and promoting the connections between young people and different kinds of community, geographically defined.
2. Conduct a scoping study of the archival material that can enable one to understand how youth organisations in Wales have sought to promote a distinctive interpretation of the connections that should exist between young people and Welsh places, the Welsh nation and an international community.
3. Convene a workshop comprising academics and practitioners from England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales in order to examine the role played by youth organisations in connecting young people to communities - in historic and contemporary contexts.

The project contributes to the Supplementary Call's demand for: more research to examine the role of cultural institutions in shaping community engagement (pp. 8-9 in the call); an increased understanding of the resursive relationship that can exist between (real) local communities and (imagined) national and transnational communities (p.3); an historical focus on the connections between groups of people and various kinds of community (pp. 6-7); an understanding of how communities can be places of tension as well as unity (p. 10), not least because of issues relating to language and religion (p. 7).

More broadly, this pilot project will act as the basis for a larger proposal, which will seek to develop a 'new British history' of youth organisations.

Our project will comprise a stock-taking exercise of the role played by youth organisations in positively socialising young people into different kinds of community and, through the archival scoping exercise, begin to shed empirical light on the role played by youth organisations in Wales in helping to shape forms of community engagement that have challenged those being promoted by a hegemonic British state- and nation-making project. It is clear, thus, that the project has the potential to have considerable impact in a number of different contexts:

1. Governmental organisations.
A crucial part of the research will be to engage with policy-makers and civil servants working on the role of youth organisations in shaping positive engagements of young people with different kinds of community, the role of youth organisations as promoters of more holistic forms of education, and as potential ways of resolving community conflict. The PI has extensive experience of communicating research findings to governmental organisations (e.g. with policy briefings as part of an ESRC-funded project on devolution, and policy submissions to the House of Lords and a very popular blog as part of a three-year Leverhulme-funded project on Behaviour Change policies). We will communicate the findings of the literature review to policy-makers through a policy briefing document, which will be distributed to relevant government departments at a British scale and the devolved governments. The workshop attendees will be useful as a way of ensuring that the briefing document is distributed to the most appropriate people. These individuals will also be able to identify local authorities, which have taken seriously the work of youth organisations as promoters of positive community engagement. In addition, we will communicate the findings of the archival scoping study to governmental bodies working with young people in Wales.

2. Non-governmental organisations.
A number of non-governmental organisations currently work with young people. These range from youth organisations to other NGOs that are more concerned with promoting more active forms of community involvement in general terms but whose work also encompasses young people indirectly. The PI has experience of working directly with some of these organisations, especially Urdd Gobaith Cymru and the various Citizens Advice bodies located within the various territories of the UK. Dr Mills, similarly, has extensive experience of working closely with the Scouting Association and with Scouts Wales. We will communicate the findings of the literature review to these two different kinds of NGO through a policy briefing document. In addition, we will communicate the findings of the archival scoping exercise to all NGOs working with young people, whether directly or indirectly, in Wales.

3. The general public.
The three investigators have extensive experience of communicating their research findings to the general public through the national media (e.g. Jones on S4C BBC Radio Cymru, BBC television, BBC Radio Wales; Merriman on BBC 4 and BBC Radio 4 and articles in the BBC History Magazine; Mills having curated a museum exhibition in Ceredigion Museum on the work of the Scouts over the twentieth century). The project team intend to use the University's press office and their own contacts in television, radio, magazines and the local and national press to circulate a press release summarising the findings of the research review. Particular attention will be paid to disseminating the findings to the Welsh media, including Welsh television and radio (BBC and S4C), and Welsh newspapers (Western Mail, Daily Post, Y Cymro).