Youth Workers and Trainers - beautiful people that I still don't know!

I have just returned from Tool Fair XVI in Marseille – congratulations to all for their efforts. An immensely enjoyable experience, I was there as a participant – first time, last year in Porto as one of three ‘Tool Talkers’ and back in 2015, a participant on a training programme connected to the Tool Fair. I made my DJ debut there – first and last time!

Aside from the introduction of a wide range of tools, the opportunity to be among a wide range of Trainers and Youth Work Practitioners is always welcome. In fact, all these kinds of events we attend – ‘the big ones’ – if you I might call them, i.e., ‘Bridges for Trainers’ and ‘The Quality Bonus’ among them, are always wonderful moments to connect and re-connect.

I am always thankful for the chance to do so. A little bit like the ‘night out,’ the ‘family reunion,’ the Christmas Dinner, or if you’re in Ireland, the post-funeral socialising where reminiscence, stories, laughter and looking back on a long life is often eulogised. In Ireland we often joke that you cry at a wedding and laugh at the funeral!

I’m at an age now which pauses me to reflect on why I am so grateful for these opportunities – I am always conscious, that it could indeed be the last one. Life is vulnerable – we have seen only too well in recent times how in a moment it can change very quickly.

Of course, it has always been like this, but in the past it was the history books that demonstrated this but you can only get so much from text on a page and not the vivid demonstrations on display through the internet and social media. With so many more of us on the planet, we run into more people in one week, arguably in one day even, than our hunter-gatherer ancestors ran into or hung around with in a lifetime.

Therefore, the potential for connection is much greater – a conversation that starts whilst waiting in a queue, running into an old-friend in the street, meeting someone who knows someone that knows you at a function, dropping into a bar in Hamburg and discovering you know the owner’s brother – yes this did indeed happen to me many years ago. Hunter Gatherers never really had those opportunities – too busy trying to survive and not be eaten by hungry or hangry animals.

You might only meet people for a few days, but the intensity, the setting, the conversations, discussions, events, the socialising, and connectedness can have a major impact. And of course, you leave energised, positive, revitalised and longing for the next one without really knowing if there will be a next one, how could you, but if you are an optimist, you believe there will be. Hope is addictive!

The wider Youth Work and Training Community is indeed a collective and, in many ways, mirrors a family of sorts. In recent times I have been - in large part because of my age, but also as a parent whose children are all grown up (two of three are parents themselves) - much more sensitised to the vulnerabilities that go hand in hand with our existence.

I’m at an age now that when I fell into youth work by accident at the age of 16, I was the youth worker that occupied the youth service back then – that’s me now. Time has moved on, in what seems like the blink of an eye, that the next tranche has come through, no not the one below me - they are already here, but rather what is effectively a third generation, at least in my lifetime.

Not one of the youth workers that occupied the Youth Service when I entered it, at least in my own area, are still working (understandably of course), but many have passed. Don’t worry, I’m not about to announce I have six months to live (some might be disappointed 😊) but at recent events such as the Tool Fairs, ‘Bridges,’ and ‘Quality Bonus,’ I realise that there is a genre of us that are moving into that bracket or category that might be labelled as ‘older ones,’ ‘the seniors’ or the ‘more experienced ones.’

Of course, no such category even exists, nor is it even mentioned. The closest we perhaps come to such a conversation is merely joking about it or confronting the reality of sitting up into the night to socialise with our colleagues and friends is just not possible anymore.

Being in youth work and/or training requires a certain amount of youthful exuberance no matter the age, but inevitably it comes with time, or it will come with time, as the number of parents increases, and as the number of parents become grandparents, the categories will emerge. It’s quite possible that I could be attending Tool Fair XXV as a Great Grand Parent!

Of course, it’s not an issue for me, I’m cool with how this is, relaxed about life, but it has got me thinking – where do we go? What do we do with our knowledge, our ideas, our thoughts? Where do the stories we carry go? Who documents them? Should they be recorded? Do they just go with us? Will they be carried by others? Will they even be shared by others? Can we trust them to give ‘the correct’ version? 😊

The tales, the myths, the fables and the legends that have navigated their way through history, that have been nurtured and carried in our hearts, our minds, our words, in our artwork and in our writings have endured, but in our community what of the modern-day equivalent of stories of triumph, achievement, accomplishment, overcoming obstacles and barriers, exceeding expectations, transforming lives, creating and imagining change, where do they go? How do they stand the test of time? How do they be heard? Who gives voice to them? How do we shine a light upon them? Where and when do we create the spaces for a sharing of stories and narratives that are not the dictate of a policy, a strategy, a work plan, a project aim, or an annual event?

Youth Work has been around for a while – its history can be charted back to the late 18th Century, and so in some respects it feels like it has always been around, at least those of us of a certain age and those we first met when we entered ‘the family’ way back when.

Professionally-speaking, it has only been around since the 1960s, and only with the advent of the EU, has the opportunity for practitioners to exchange and meet been around at least more regularly since the 1980s, and consistently since the 1900s.

It was only with the advent of Erasmus+, and its various iterations before that - Youth for Europe, YOUTH and Youth in Action - has this collective, has this family been born and raised, often in turbulent environments.

Some of us have effectively grown up with it and carved out at least our international practice within Erasmus world. We have been very fortunate, indeed very lucky, but what has occurred to me is that most of us who have occupied this world do so without paying any attention to our own mortality, our own place within it, our own presence and its impact. It will most probably outlive us and outgrow us in some shape, form, or fashion. It will move on – it is how it is. It’s how it goes.

Like time, Youth Work and Training doesn’t wait for us. We’re always planning, creating, making, producing, innovating, achieving, accomplishing and so on. Whether its tools, resources, models, documents, manuals, and events, we’re always striving to meet the needs of policies, strategies, and plans, yet we rarely if ever stop, just to engage with each other as humans, to hear our stories, our experiences, our pains, our sorrow, our mistakes, our failings, our worries, our fears, our aspirations, our ambitions, our passions and more.

Yes of course, we chat during breaks, after sessions, during social times; we message, e-mail, call and visit, but most if not entirely all of it is with our practitioner hat on. Some of us even date, get married, get divorced.

But, I almost feel we leave our humanity at the door, and we put on our youth work hats, don our trainer robes, and slip into our facilitator shoes, without truly having the space and time to show our humanity; to reveal our inner thoughts, our trials and tribulations, or just to relax, and to connect, without there having to be a justification for the desire to meet, to need to be with our peers, the want to connect with our ‘comrades,’ so even at a bare minimum, we do not feel isolated or alone, do not feel lonely or even rejected.

We are a collective, we are a community, and arguably a family – some come and go, but the door is open, people return, people stay longer, people join the ride for a while, and people go it alone. But creating those spaces and those places to be human together must be explained, justified, tick a box, meet an objective, fit with a plan, honour a strategy, multiply an impact, connect a policy with another policy, achieve an aim, before it is allowed, approved, or authorised.

We speak often about the importance of connection, our work is relational, we care about human touch, the need to be together, the need for self-care, ensuring we look after each other, protect our own mental health, that our well-being is carefully and sensitively nurtured, yet when we get together, we fill time as much as we can, we structure time in as many creative ways as we can so that we can appear clever and innovative.

We devote so little of or common existence, our collective breath, and our togetherness to being present with one another, without the facilitator shoes on, the trainer robes around us and the practitioner hats perched.

For those of a certain age, we tend to reflect more, we see patterns that come around again, we notice the core – who’s in, who’s out – we know we don’t need to perform any more, we know ‘it is what it is,’ we feel a sense of purpose in just being there, embracing, honouring, enjoying, holding and creating spaces, stopping to look, observing more, savouring.

But we won’t always be here, what happens then? Where is our legacy? What happens to our stories? Where do our contributions go? Will we be remembered? We have been here from the start. What are our thoughts now? What are our conclusions? What do we notice? What do we see? What do we really want to say? Do we have the right conversations? Are we still needed? Where is the baton and do we hand it over? Did we ever have our hand on it in the first place? What is our role now? How can we support? What is left for us? What do we bring now? What did we bring in the first place? Are we still relevant? Do we still have a voice? Why are we needed? Should we even care anymore?

We get older, the more I know the less I know, every day is a school day, just savour the moment, enjoy, inspire, share, offer thoughts, force nothing, give of your time, laugh plenty, hug more, be present, encourage, be curious, show care, be kind, love, hold onto the hope, relate, tell stories, reminisce, dance, dance freely, look back, look in, look forward, capture, energise, be true, be authentic.

We come together and there’s a dance, a carefully choreographed sense of being, that permeates, that stitches the seams together, that builds spirit from inwards, that fortifies how we look to ‘the external’ that recgonises our role, our place, our impact.

We become cohesive, organised, effective, planned, and ready to deliver, yet that potential, that sense of opportunity, that human side of those that make our community unique, distinctive, special and human itself is rarely on display, or rather is portrayed through the tools, resources and mechanisms that we have become accustomed to creating, but rarely if ever through making time for one another.

The International Youth Work and Trainers Community has never really experienced major loss to my knowledge. I’m sure there are those that have lost colleagues that were involved in the international field, but I guess more so they were on the periphery. I have colleagues that have been involved in international or to be more precise, European Youth Work for quite some time, but not always front and centre.

As with any field there tends to be a core, instantly recongnisable faces, colleagues whom you don’t even have to say their surnames, they are known by their first names. They are there, and have been in and around for a while, but of course, time moves on, and with it the stories evolve, or become left behind, and new narratives emerge. A narrative doesn’t care, it’s not a sentient being, it is the story of someone only relative to the moment that it exists in and does not give due regard to stories that came before.

How do we ensure that our common humanity as a collective, as a family is not ignored, and the stories and the narratives that weave and thread their way through our DNA are not lost? Why do we choose not to discover who we are, the human – the father, the daughter, the son, the reader, the traveller, the cook, the writer, the musician, the novelist, the athlete, the designer, the carer.

I meet wonderful and beautiful people, but I leave always not really knowing them – just the person who is the Trainer, the Youth Worker, the Facilitator, the Moderator, the Guest Speaker, the Tool Fair Talker et al.

Covid came, it saw, it left its mark – as I write this, I have just tested positive for it myself – so far it seems to be on holidays, but it can change, maybe the next day or two it emerges from its slumber and takes me out without mercy. Who knows? That’s the problem – we never do, we can’t, and so whilst we still can, we should make time and space to discover more of our humanity.

We are always doing, doing, doing and not being, being, being. Let’s have a little more being, being present and park some of the doing.

Wouldn’t it be nice to spend time peers, colleagues, and friends from this family and beloved community, where we have space where we don’t have to perform, we don’t have to promote, we don’t have to produce, and perhaps, we don’t have to pretend?

The next time I join you, I’d like to discover who you are, and not what you do! Let’s capture our community whilst most of us are still around.