NOTES FOR CHANGE
by Charley Genever
1. We all know how the world is, we feel it in our fists, the evidence is there, we’re failing at least two million of our kids and not one of them deserves it.
2. A shut door is a barrier. A bus ticket is a barrier. Education is a barrier. Your 35+ staff team with the same average age is a barrier.
3. The system is an ancient ocean and provision comes in paddling pools. The figures go over our heads to the ebb of rich, white hands. Look at them wave, floating their tick boxes and funding loops to our shoreline for us to ascribe our lives to.
4. This is not how it should be. Kids do not come culture free and every turned cheek becomes a disaffected memory.
5. Imagine how fresh democracy would be if we showed every child they’re worthy of creativity.
6. There’s so much noise when you’re young. Layers and layers of it. A slow story, a clock for a tongue, all the words come out wrong. Shame slots in-between, breeding on the lack of opportunity.
7. Jargon is only good for lingo bingo. It’s condescending. Get it off your posters.
8. Art is the business of people, the right for everyone to belong, for new minds to find their tribes, to create thriving humans.
9. If you don’t wear this sentiment across your chest you’re not a youth engagement officer, you’re a security guard.
10. Are you being honest with yourself? Are you riding your high horse to the estates, the academies, the prisons, or are you watching the horizon shrink from your office?
11. LISTEN. The youth will speak. GIVE SPACE. The youth will fill it.
12. In the right light even dust will ignite. Sparks in school visits, in workshops with guest artists, in museum trips and paid internships. Don’t tell me you can’t evaluate a twinkle. You are asking the wrong questions.
13. Remember when you were first gifted the power to make the ground sound magical? Turn tarmac to fairytale. Open the curtains and let the whole street in.
14. There is no alternative to hope. It’s all we’ve got.
15. There is no alternative to hope. It’s all we’ve got.
