The Radical Community Work Journal is offering a space for academics, practitioners, and students to contribute to the discussion about how we, ‘build back better’ for its Summer 2021 issue. There is an open invitation for thinking and writing which is challenging, thought provoking, inspirational and rooted in real life.
Baroness Barran, Minister for Civil Society will be joining the NYA for a special Q&A livestream webinar on Thurs 11th Feb at 1pm on the NYA YouTube channel. Colleagues are invited to send questions that you would like to be discussed in this webinar by emailing them to media@nya.org.uk
The Back Youth Alliance is a collaboration of senior leaders and youth representatives from some of the UK’s leading youth charities, working together to present a coherent voice to decision-makers with and for young people. An open letter has been written to the Chancellor and Government asking them to uphold promises made to the youth sector.
New national restrictions aimed at reducing Covid-19 infections begin in England from 5 November. This second lockdown is different from the first as schools, colleges and universities are remaining open. This also means the youth sector can remain partially active during this period within adherence to NYA guidance for the RED readiness level available via this link
A gathering of members took place via Zoom on 23rd October to reflect on the return to teaching under the continuing shadow of Covid-19 restrictions. This post summarises some of the views and experiences of colleagues across institutions throughout the UK on an academic year that is far from normal!
The National Youth Agency (NYA) has launched a refresh of the National Curriculum for Youth Work. The NYA intends for the new National Youth Work Curriculum to enable a greater understanding of youth work practice, provide an educational framework and act as a reference tool to be used by decision makers, policy makers, commissioners, youth workers and young people.
In April a group of Association colleagues, Janet Batsleer, Tania de St Croix, Kevin Jones and Christine Smith invited people to join them in contributing diary entries as youth workers to the ‘Mass Observation Archive’ at Sussex University. Articles are now available on an evaluation of the diary entries…
In this Blog, Janet Batsleer reflects on the future for youth and community work and identifies three challenges for our community of practice. She writes as she draws towards the end of her ‘working’ life as an academic at Manchester Metropolitan University and reminds us: ‘no one does any of this work alone and that most of our strength is in the fact that what we do, we do collectively.’ Please read the full article here:
Earlier this year, before coronavirus had fully taken hold in the UK and prior to lockdown, the Association was invited to an event at Manchester Metropolitan University to mark the end of a local project that was ‘hijacked’ as an opportunity for colleagues to thank Janet Batsleer for her influential career as she approached retirement from the University. This blog is a record of our contribution and gift to Janet as she enters the next phase of her journey:
'Educating Informal Educators' will draw on the range of expertise in Higher Education courses across the UK and seeks to emphasise the value of informal education, its values and practices not only for students of education or informal education, but for society as a whole. This special issue will focus on how informal education pedagogies, practices and principles are engaged with, modelled, taught or shared in Higher Education.
We held our sixth ‘members connect’ online conversation on 26th June and convened to discuss collaborations in 2020-2021 as we look towards the new academic year. The discussion focussed on areas where members have found collaboration with their peers to be impactful and areas where further collaborations would help strengthen individual confidence, the standing of courses within their institutions and the role of academics in our subject discipline.
