Listening and learning

I was recently at a training course, which looked at how to work with young people at risk of getting trapped in the benefits system.
One of the discussions focused on how to help young people think differently about their problems, and operated on the premise that ‘there is no failure, only learning’. One fellow attender declared loudly that he doesn’t have problems. Only challenges.
I found myself feeling furious, and responded quite vehemently. It’s an admirable aim to go through life thinking like this, but to start out from this position, when working with young people who arguable do have very serious problems, hurdles, barriers or whatever you choose to call them, is a very bad idea.

All of the roles I have had in the arts education sector and many of the projects I have run, have put me in a position to officially or unofficially mentor young people. Invariably, on each occasion, at least some of the arts project participants have said that it’s the first time they have felt listened to and that their opinion has been taken seriously and valued.
This is one of the great things about using the arts to work with young people and in introducing young people to the arts – that it is both a means to an end and an end in itself. The arts give us the space to work with people on their own terms. Embracing this kind of positive thinking jargon will sound great in theory, but stop us listening to the young people we are working with as individuals.
A young person who feels that they have not done well enough, that they could do better or that they haven’t made the most of an opportunity should be encouraged, but encouraged from their starting point, and not from a starting point of dismissing those feelings as the ‘wrong’ way of looking at things.
On top of everything that’s being cut at the moment, let’s not cut back on active listening and empathy.