Starting young?: links between childhood and adult participation in culture and science: a literature review

A selective review of research literature on the extent of childhood exposure to and experience of culture and science and subsequent adult cultural or science participation

Peter Beresford (2016) All Our Welfare: Towards Participatory Social Policy

Book review - Peter Beresford (2016) All Our Welfare: Towards Participatory Social Policy&nbsp

Review: William Davies, (2016) The Happiness Industry

Whilst doing fieldwork in Vientiane, Laos, for my PhD looking at the ways in which young people understand happiness, a young man made a throwaway comment to me that ‘you can’t measure a smile…well, you could but it wouldn’t mean anything’. I was catapulted back to this encounter the moment that I saw the cover for William Davies’s book The Happiness Industry which features a smile with a scale running along its length which is maybe a ruler, or maybe one of the seemingly ubiquitous survey questions that asks the respondent to rate, on a scale of 1 to 10, their happiness

Children and young people’s participation rights:Looking backwards and moving forwards

Children and young people’s participation is an ever-growing demand. Thirty years on from the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child’s adoption, however, fundamental challenges continue for participation that are widely recognised cross-nationally but remain stubbornly consistent. As a way in to considering the children and young people’s participation literature more generally, all articles referring to participation in their titles were identified from The International Journal of Children’s Rights. These 56 articles were analysed to identify trends, challenges and opportunities. The analysis found: a remarkably consistent narrative on participation over the 30 years; limitations on domains considered, geography and conceptual clarity; and far more written about challenges than solutions. Drawing on these findings and considering the participation literature more generally, the article recommends that the field expands its geographic and intellectual boundaries, uses powerful concepts like agency, competency and autonomy with greater precision, and explores fresh ideas like child protoganism, activism and children as human rights defenders

'That was another moment where people were like wow! These young people have really done something!'

A conversation between three young people who designed and wrote a storybook challenging gender stereotypes, supported by Christina McMellon Associate Researcher, Centre for Research on Families and Relationships, University of Edinburgh

Critical happiness: examining the beliefs that young Lao volunteers in Vientiane hold about the things that make life good.

Happiness is consistently cited as one of the things that people consider most important in their lives and yet is a slippery concept about which it is difficult to establish a shared understanding. There is increasing agreement that Gross National Product (GDP) is not a sufficient indicator of progress and that alternative measures may need to include the subjective aspects of wellbeing, or happiness. However, if policy makers and development workers are to seriously consider happiness, clarity is required about what it means to different people and such clarity must be grounded in the everyday experiences of the people whose lives social and development polices aim to improve. Despite increasing interest in the concept of happiness within Laos, academic research focusing upon positive subjective experience is limited. Young Lao people who volunteer with Non-Profit Associations (NPAs) in Vientiane occupy a unique position at the crossroads of a country that continues to be affected by a complex political legacy, a rapidly modernising capital city and a newly visible civil society. The findings from the current research provide rich data from 18 months of ethnographic and participative fieldwork with this specific group of young people in Vientiane. The research addresses the following questions: What do the ways that young Lao volunteers in Vientiane express happiness tell us about the ways that they conceptualise happiness? What do young volunteers in Vientiane say makes them happy? What beliefs do young volunteers in Vientiane have about happiness? How do these beliefs about happiness fit with young volunteers’ expressed experiences of happiness? This thesis identifies three key conceptual models that research participants used to express happiness including ‘Being Happy’ (happiness is a present moment choice), ‘Becoming Happy’ (happiness is something to be achieved) and ‘Happy Being With Others’ (happiness is located in relationships between people). Further, three culturally constructed ‘happiness scripts’ that research participants share are outlined and discussed. The three scripts are: “The way to be happy is to be a good Lao person”, “I will be happy if I have the things that I need to be comfortable and to have an easy life” and “I am happy when I follow my heart”. These scripts each combine a conceptual mode of happiness with a focus on specific aspects of their lives that research participants say make them happy and a set of shared beliefs about happiness. These three scripts offer normative accounts of different pathways that research participants believe will lead to happiness. The research demonstrates, however, how research participants hold multiple scripts simultaneously and looks at the interactions and tensions between the scripts and between the scripts and participants’ lived experiences. The research concludes that the socially constructed nature of the happiness scripts and the multiple conceptual models of happiness used by the research participants emphasise the need for self-awareness and transparency in conversations about happiness. Any consideration of happiness at policy level must include open and critical discussion about the happiness script that is being promoted. At the individual level participants valued positive opportunities to become aware of and challenge their own assumptions about the things that are most important in their lives were beneficial to their happiness. The thesis, therefore, recommends a shift in policy focus from solely measuring happiness to promoting positive conversations about happiness at policy, community and individual levels. Happiness is both an important experience and a slippery concept. It is both critical that we consider it and vital that we remain critical of it

Young Edinburgh Action: Reinvigorating young people's participation in Edinburgh

Young Edinburgh Action (YEA) is an innovative approach to implementing the City of Edinburgh Council’s Young People’s Participation Strategy. It is informed by the views of young people and professionals, academic theory and the need for local government to evidence the work that they do and critically review their approaches. YEA developed a partnership with the Centre for Research on Families and Relationships to capture the unique qualities of the approach and to share learning

Young people's rights and mental health during a pandemic: an analysis of the impact of emergency legislation in Scotland

Emerging evidence indicates that the COVID-19 pandemic and government measures put in place in response to this have had a detrimental impact on young people’s mental health. A children’s human rights-based approach was taken to examine the impact of the legislative and policy measures that were implemented in Scotland in response to the pandemic on children’s rights related to their mental health. Key concerns were identified around children’s rights to access mental health services and information, participation in decision-making and non-discrimination of vulnerable groups. Although the analysis focussed on Scotland, recommendations to protect these rights are likely to be relevant to other countries following similar approaches as lockdown restrictions are eased, or in the event that stricter local or national measures are required again to curb rising infection rates or subsequent wave(s)

Doing ok? Children and young people's views on what affects their mental health

This briefing highlights the findings from a consultation which was undertaken with specific groups of children and young people in order to inform the NHS Health Scotland draft framework for children and young people’s mental health indicators. The aim was to determine whether these children and young people thought that the framework matched their views of what affects their mental health. The consultation project was carried out by researchers at the Centre for Research on Families and Relationships (CRFR) at The University of Edinburgh