Young people in rural areas need a youth service too:
Reflections on the Re-act Project in Castle Cary, Somerset
by
Dave Wiles, Chief Executive of Frontier Youth Trust
Those
were the days; we would wander in the country lanes, using our
sticks to hit the heads from the Giant Hogweed in the hedgerows,
watching the seeds cascade down, legs and arms tanned in the gentle
sunshine of our rural ideal! We would lie for hours, either imagining
all manner of things in the shapes of the cotton wool clouds as
they drifted overhead, or giggling together at some pre-pubescent
adolescent joke - I'll leave the subject matter to your imagination!
It
seemed safe, the light appeared brighter, the grass seemed greener
and life was a lot less complicated! No computers - other than
the one housed in a small outhouse building at my school, which
could just about achieve the equivalent of what I can now do on
my wrist watch! No mobile phones, boy bands, cheap air flights
or reality TV! OK, my perspective is somewhat 'Disney-esque' but
growing up on the edge of Bath (where I still live), on a council
estate 
with
few youth facilities, has left me with a degree of nostalgia when
I think about my forays into the surrounding countryside.
However,
if there is anything I have learnt about youth work, it is that
I am now an immigrant in the youth culture and experience of today.
Things have changed and continue to change at an alarming rate.
What about young people growing up in the country now? What is
their inner landscape like and what are their dreams and aspirations?
How will they look back on the 'good old days'? It seems to me
that there are some significant differences to the experience
of young people growing up in rural areas today that I never faced
in my 'hay day'!
First,
it seems (or perhaps is?) less safe. If it is not the risk posed
by the proliferation of traffic, then children and young people,
as well as their parents, are so much more aware of the issues
and concerns raised by paedophile activity and other forms of
abuse. There must have been a correlative restriction on the movements
of children and young people's movements and activity. What impact
has this had upon children and young people? What impact has it
had upon those children and young people who are situated in locations
where there may be less choice about safe, supervised local activities
- whether commercial or otherwise?
Alongside
this, you have a growing bombardment upon young people about what
is, and is not, 'cool' and what they should be able to enjoy and
experience projected at them by an ever-increasing and seemingly
all-powerful system of mass media. The problem is that many of
the media enticements depend on an effective transport system
- as well as a more than healthy bank balance!
What
is the effect on children and young people in rural areas? Are
they perhaps even more disadvantaged than their urban and suburban
counterparts? Are they likely to be more frustrated by the lure
of the ideal teenage experience?
Finally,
in an age when public services have to be prioritised (if you
believe all you hear) on criteria that take account of numbers
and indices of social deprivation, which are often by definition
weighted towards urban and suburban populations, where does that
leave rural children and young people? Are children and young
people in rural areas getting a raw deal perhaps in terms of social
and community services? Where is their collective bargaining power
or statistical muscle when it comes to arguing for better youth
services?
These
are some of the reasons why Frontier Youth Trust, an organisation
which is passionately committed to young people at risk, has been
pleased to work with the Diocese of Bath and Wells in developing
the Re-act Project. We believe that young people should not be
discriminated against because of where they live, that they have
wishes and aspirations that should be heard and responded to,
and that they have every right to access decent youth facilities.
We hope that the Re-act Project will make a difference for young
people growing up in the Castle Cary area and that it might even
be able to spread to surrounding areas.
