Children of the mountain: finding ways to enable participation

[Alex Fradera]

Hi all

I wanted to open a thread on this topic - I know many others have things to contribute. I will start with my own experience at this year's festival where I decided to organise a Kids Council.

 I first heard about Kids Councils via Charlie Davies, whose friend Floris Koot has experimented with it in different social settings. The idea is simple: a set of kids - in their later single digits, but pre-pubescent - give advice about the life issues of adult seekers. (It's arguably more counsel than council, but this is how it was put to me.) I read up on it, quizzed Floris, and on to Uncivilisation I went.A group of kids gathered in the kids yurt, self-selecting as the council members. I won't out them here, but if they or their parents-by-proxy would like to enter the conversation, that would be great.

I set some guidelines, the principal being "don't answer a question until you're sure you understand it, ask more questions instead", and we did a couple of pseudo run-throughs with some ersatz problems. Then I kicked myself out of the tent. I can't deny being accompanied by an anxious refrain of "what am I letting these kids in for?"

 Forty minutes and three or four adults later, the council was happy but done, and went out to stretch their legs. Across the course of the festival, word about the council's success trickled back to me; people had found it profound, had been taken to some difficult places, were provided with novel, workable solutions.

 This success should be no surprise, really. Especially for us: a population who should be open to the notion that industrial conditioning and civilisation narratives can lead us down unhelpful paths, and recognise that children are far freer of these influences, so far, at least.

 In any case, this throws up some possibilities for future Dark Mountain meetups....

[Alex Fradera]

So, some possibilities.

 

Firstly, the process as it stands seemed to work well, so at the least we may want to replicate it at the next festival, or any face-to-face event where children are present (and interested!). But I think we could be thinking wilder.

 

What about a genuine children's council, an en masse group grappling with social rather than individual issues, taking a role in shaping the direction of the movement? Or a children's representative on discussion panels as a matter of course?  

 

Furthermore, there is no reason why the structure of children's participation should be decided by adults - as I was certainly guilty of for the inaugural council (as it happened, the kids re-rigged the process in all manner of ways once I left the tent, and rightly so). Can we provide enough platform for children to have a voice to participate in ways we don't anticipate?

 

I'm also musing about story; we have been telling adult stories - our own - to each other, adults telling stories to children and adults telling stories to adults to enjoy them as children. Are we interested in the stories of children? What does the world look like to an alert ten-year-old? I believe that given the importance of stories to Dark Mountain, it's time to hear from those who can see the shape and momentum of the present moment unencumbered by comparison to the past.

 

I'd really like to hear what you think. This may or may not be the thread to hear directly from younger people; I'd be delighted if it were so, but I also think beginning a discussion among us adults on the topic is a great advance, so please join the debate without misgiving!

 

Best

Alex

 

[cricket 7642]

hi Alex

my daughter was on your Kids Council, I will ask her if she'd like to add her comments here. She told me a little bit about her experience (she enjoyed it!) but not much of what was actually covered in the sessions.

There's a lot in this topic - not least our accepted cultural norms around childhood and child development, which is pinned so closely to how we perceive human nature. I think there's been a great deal of work done already in our culture around children's participation - off the top of my head I think of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Scottish Youth Parliament, the establishment of Pupil Councils in schools and the insidious rise of consumer marketing aimed at and involving children (Ed Mayo and Agnes Nairn have done great research on this). But ultimately these are all examples of what you hit on when you mention "the structure of children's participation... decided by adults." 

It boils down to token power and real power. Sorry, power is an emotive word and I'm not sure if it's the right one. But here's a quote to try to clarify "Power is the ability to take one's place in whatever discourse is essential to action and the right to have one's part matter." (Carolyn Heilbrun) Participation is only real when it is respected by others, to the extent that action follows and not simply tokenistic acknowledgment and dismissal. It boils down to whether or not one matters. So not "tell us how you can fit yourself into what we're already doing" but rather "join us from the start in working out together how to do things."

I think you're touching on this yourself when you suggest that we find a way to give children a starting platform from which they organise themselves, and make space to hear their stories as equal among our own. I think your suggestion of an actual kids council is really good - in fact it is what I thought kids council would be about when you were first suggesting it for the festival a couple months back. One thing we could do as adults is to structure ourselves in a support role to the council you are proposing, in such a way that we are responding to what children offer us, and taking their lead. We would need to commit to this as adults and support one another in taking it forward as it evolves. I think most adults do acknowledge the insights that children offer and feel profoundly humbled by them, but don't know how to act on this in a practical way - well at least I can only speak for myself in that, and admit how many shrewd suggestions my daughter has offered to me in her lifetime in the form of both good ideas and overt criticisms, and how confused and stuck I get in understanding how to act on them. We face an overwhelming hurdle in the status quo, which says that childhood is a unique space in human life, of a unique mindset which should and will be outgrown; in other words, that what children offer is fanciful and idealistic but not legitimate or pragmatic.

There's so much more underneath all this, about why and how we choose to do things, and what structures and processes we use to make things happen, or to not happen as the case may be. I think there's still a huge amount of ground to cover in DM around these issues - this is of course already being talked about in other threads and was touched on at the festival in the Future of DM session - but I do very much like your idea of including children in a collective approach.

[Clodagh Miskelly]

Hi Alex and Julia

 

Julia - I didn't know I had met your daughter as well as you at the festival.

 

I don't have much right now to add to what you have both said but wanted to say how important i think this is and yes! how important it is to look beyond " the structures of children's participation .. decided by adults". 

I was someone who enjoyed the children's counsel/council  -  i'll admit to being unsure what kind of questions to ask .. I asked a very personal but fairly safe question as I was the first person to bring a question and it felt like testing the water.   I've been thinking since about different questions that could be asked or that the children might want to ask themselves..  I did ask later what questions the group thought we should be asking them.. and I can't for the life of me now remember the answers! (hopefully some of the others who were there can)...

I think Julia's suggestion of adults committing in a support role is an excellent one.  It's also a difficult practice, we adults find it so difficult not to assert ourselves and we do so with our bodies as much as our words and we do so within a structure where we have the power most of the time in big and tiny but meaningful ways.  I have a little experience of working with young people, in their teens mostly and usually around filmmaking and storytelling and recently have been looking at some of the things that adults have been writing about children's participation - (and doing a small piece of writing about that too in the very specific context of working with and making a film with young men who are considered as having communication difficulties) - some of which might be useful to this conversation or it might just distract us and take us back into too much of an adult space - I don't know...   Mostly from my reading and especially my practice I've learned what not to do and what isn't supportive ..

I also want to say that  i think that young people in their teens are an absence in Dark Mountain too...

 

[Nick Stewart]

Alex - "it's time to hear from those who can see the shape and momentum of the present moment unencumbered by comparison to the past". I think this cuts to the core of what concerns me. As a parent of a six year old girl I am deeply concerned about how the next generation(s) come to terms with the legacy we are leaving them. I think for an initiative like Dark Mountain to develop it will need to somehow be communicable to those now growing into the coming crises. Without the involvement of a dynamic spectrum of young opinion (and I don't mean 20 and 30 somethings, haha), there's risk DM would just settle into being a more conventional organisation. 

The Council was a good thing that worked well but I was more excited about the possibilities it opened up: the idea of DM mutating through its adoption by communities, particularly of age. The question is how can 'kids' be involved in something like this without it just being another adult imposition on their time: time they'd rather be doing other stuff in. Ideally DM would have the status of 'other stuff', not something imposed but something as attractive as other things kids like to do. As someone in his late 50s I could hardly claim to be able to offer an insight into that particular conumdrum ...

 

 

[Stranger]

Luke 18:16  But Jesus called them unto him, and said, Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.