Story of a one day OST with youth

Chris Corrigan chris.corrigan at gmail.com
Mon Dec 5 12:45:38 PST 2005


Colleagues:

Here to report on an OST meeting that I did on the weekend for a really
interesting project which got youth to monitor violations of the UN
Convention on the Rights of the Child..

The project was the brainchild of a number of organizations in the City of
Vancouver, who came together to ask about how the UN convention could be
used to draw attention to some of the pressing issues faced by children and
youth in Vancouver.  These issues included experiences in the child welfare
system, poverty, lack of equitably funded education opportunities in poor
neighbourhoods, safety and treatment by police, transit security and others
in power.

The project lasted over two months during which youth facilitators working
with a team at the City of Vancouver set out to hold focus groups to educate
youth about the Convention, and to gather information from youth themselves
on rights violations.  More than that though, the youth were also invited to
create visions for the future and for the City that they wanted to see, and
these visions were harvested through words and pictures.

All of this work through local neighbourhood organizations culminated this
past Friday and Saturday.  Thirty five youth gathered on Friday, to meet one
another, build community and most importantly, reflect on their experience
in the process and create a performance piece that would express a summary
of what the project had learned.  The performance itself involved the
construction of a mural, some spoken word and rap, music and playback
theatre.  Parts of the performance were in English, Spanish, Portuguese,
Hebrew and Russian.

Saturday morning, leaders from various levels of government and
organizations were invited to join the youth in Open Space to figure out
where to go forward.  The project was officially over on the Saturday, and
so we wanted to create a space in which the messages would get sent and an
invitation made from the youth to the adults to work together to keep alive
the spirit of what was happening.  Fifty five people gathered Saturday
morning, and the youth did their performance which kicked off a short and
intense Open Space.  There was some significant power in the room, including
two Members of the Provincial Legislative Assembly one of whom is the the
provincial child welfare critic.  Topics raised included what to do to help
youth live independently and in safe conditions, stopping police harassment
of Aboriginal and Latino youth by working with the police, and educating
youth and adults on rights.  All of the groups were composed of both youth
and adults and the feeling in the room was one of possibility and optimism,
despite the huge nature of some of the changes that were being discussed.
To have provincial politicians sitting in the room with street youth,
working together to move forward the learnings from the project was a
powerful experience.

Increasingly I am seeing the possibility involved in bringing creative
expression into play with youth working in Open Space.  I know there have
been many conversations about playback theatre here over the years, but,
being a little slow on the uptake sometimes, I'm just now beginning to see
how it integrates with OST work.  The creative pieces, and the process of
creating something together, is another practice ground for passion bounded
by responsibility, and youth find their voices in many different ways when
they are invited to work together to create art which is used as an
invitation for action.  There are a number of places in which I think this
can be a significant combination and I'll be looking for opportunities like
this over the next little while.  In the meantime, if you have had
experience combining youth, creativity and Open Space together, let me know
so I can continue to expand my horizons on this a little bit.

I have a photo gallery from this event at my Flickr site, for those that
want a more visual taste of the day.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/31354844@N00/sets/1509187/

Cheers,

Chris

--

CHRIS CORRIGAN
Consultation - Facilitation
Open Space Technology

Weblog: http://www.chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot
Site: http://www.chriscorrigan.com

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