Raising aspiration
First posted at 17:13GMT on 15/12/08 by Sarah Schulman
Aspirations are too low. So says a new report by the Cabinet Office. 2.4 million young people, mostly White and male, have little to no ambition. They live in insular communities with few opportunities for exit. The answer is to re-appropriate the school as the focal point of the community. The Guardian quotes the Cabinet Office minister as saying, “Over the years to come we’re spending £35bn on Building Schools for the Future and we are spending hundreds of millions on renewing the fabric of the health service so in many low-income communities we are revolutionising public institutions. We have to think afresh about how those institutions become the ‘power supply’ for aspiration in the communities they serve.” Schools as hubs of community regeneration is not a new idea, but one that has produced results around the world. But it is not the building itself that lifts aspirations and cultivates hope. It is the relationships young people form with peers, community members, and professionals. Buildings can support (or not constrain) relationship building, but they don’t automatically generate new patterns of behavior. Later in the article, the minister describes how young people with a sense of community and religious belief have higher aspirations. That’s because they gain a sense of purpose--mediated through the wider range of people in their lives. The question is how to we increase the diversity of people in young people’s lives. Opening up more health centers, youth centers, and schools will not, by itself, change people’s experiences with people. If anything it can reconfirm existing patterns and power dynamics. What are some ways to shake things up? Hopefully, in January, we’ll start to find out as Participle does work with young people and adults, inside and outside of institutions.
Ambition stems from a desire to achieve. To be something that we aren’t today. To create something that does not exist. Passionate ambition requires goals, or glimpses of what we collectively wish to achieve.
The interactions of diverse citizens of varying ages can perhaps both identify goals and facilitate the ambition to achieve them. What if the youth of a community were seen as partners and collaborators? Instead of merely recipients of knowledge and direction, what if they were truly engaged. Similarly, what if the eldest members of our communities were seen in the same light?
The power of problem definition and problem solving is truly great. What if communities identified and tachled their most local issues by teaming together the youth and elders? The focus on the local community is the medium that maintains desire for engagement. It’s this community that all parties are invested in. So for example, what if ‘better communication’ was identified as a need for the community. Could we facilitate a new community newsletter, newspaper, website, etc. created by diverse teams of citizens including youth? Might this position the “physical buildings” of the community as facilitators instead of solutions in and of themselves? Could such co-creation initiatives foster the ambition of youth to recognize the impact they can make?
The Participle project you mention upcoming is quite interesting. Looking forward to hearing more about it. We are pursuing initial explorations in our community (U.S) around the notion of neighborhoods and their ability function and achieve together. Best of luck on the project.
Jeff Mulhausen, 19/1/09, 09:38GMT