A Tale of Two Youth Groups: Introduction to Cases

Engaging with two in-depth case studies in-depth, as well as touching on additional cases, allowed me to gather ‘thick’ ethnographic data, whilst also distinguishing wider patterns from phenomena particular to specific groups (Davies and Dwyer, 2007b; Lahelma et al., 2014). It is crucial to note that the two different cases, although ‘comparable’, were not understood as comparisons. Both youth groups were nodes in communities based on council estates which provided youth work services and facilitated trips abroad, but they were also very different in their organisational structures and ethos. They are two parallel stories, at times overlapping and at other times diverging. In moving between them, ‘making connections within the recognition of difference’ (Lahelma et al 2014: 53), resonances and contrasts emerged which clarified my arguments.

Springboard is based on the Alton estate in south-west London, one of the largest in the UK with 13,000 residents. Most of the estate was constructed in 1952-58, and is an example of ‘utopian’ mixed-development social housing of some architectural renown, with clusters of blocks spread out within green space, in 10

‘neighbourhoods’ (Open University, 2001). It is in one of the strips of shops on the estate that Springboard’s offices and their youth club are located. Springboard’s organisational history has been driven by Gary, its founder. Having grown up nearby, the son of a mechanic, he moved onto the estate at 21. In 2000, aged 25, alongside ‘a group of mates’ including his wife Caris, from a charismatic Christian

‘house group’, Gary initiated a lunch club for elderly people and after-school activities for teenagers from a desire ‘to dream a bit about what we could do in this community […] at the time in the estate there were a lot of boarded up shops, a lot of kids hanging around, seemingly not really doing much’ (Gary, Youth Worker).

The services they provided were immediately popular. In 2006, they separated the youth work from the work with the elderly, Gary’s mum heading up a charity dealing with the latter.

  Figure 3: Housing on the Alton Estate

At the time of research, Springboard’s activities included: a football club, a music group called the ‘lyricists lounge’, mentoring, an ‘enterprise group’, a drop-in youth club, a double decker bus serving as a mobile youth club for surrounding estates, and the overseas trips. A core team of 6 staff, including Gary and Caris, ran the work supported by a number of sessional youth workers and a roster of volunteers.

Springboard’s faith position is complex. Gary and Caris see Springboard as ‘faith inspired’ rather than ‘faith based’ and about ‘spirituality’ not ‘Christianity’.

Spirituality is conceived as linked to ‘the act of service, and community, and caring for one another’ (Caris, Youth Worker). Their programmes do not contain any direct, planned religious element. Yet ‘behind the scenes’ and in informal

discussions, a Christian theology of ‘incarnation’ - faith as embodied social actions conducted with and alongside people – and a vision of Christianity as about ‘fun and adventure’ (Isaac, Youth Worker)¹² is central to their approach. On trips, they have a positive orientation towards young people ‘finding God’ and an ambivalent attitude to proselytising by their overseas partners.

Springboard’s distinctive ethos is strongly influenced by Gary’s charismatic, laddy personality. The charity is all about fun, friendship and a ‘can do’ attitude. Gary relishes engaging with ‘full on, hard-core, in-trouble sort of guys’ and having ‘proper adventures’ (Gary, Youth Worker). Their risk-embracing, deeply inclusive approach is illustrated the fact many of the young people they work with and have taken

12 John 10:10 ‘I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.’ (NIV)

abroad are involved in ‘gangs’ or are ex-offenders. All the young people I met expressed genuine, deep admiration for Gary and Caris and many testified that their loose approach to dispensing trust, affirmation and second chances has had a profound affect their life. One young person simply expressed that he liked that you don’t have to have ‘already changed’ to get involved with the charity. However, it is not inclusive in all dimensions. The blokey, banter-filled, football-loving culture that underpins many close relationships also plays into a gender imbalance in the young people the charity works with. The need to expand work with young women was a topic of conversation during my research, but their informality impeded

programmatic action, and Gary’s ability to connect with ‘high risk’ young men is incentivised by its attractiveness to funders.

The overseas trips became a central part of the organisation’s work after 2005, when Gary went to Kenya with a charismatic church group. He narrates the first trip with young people in 2006 as an experiment following a suggestion from Kenyans, saying: ‘they said… why don’t I bring some young people from

London… So I said, alright, I’ll see what I can do […] thought – why not, let’s give it a go…’ (Gary, Youth Worker). The project Springboard visits is a children’s home in Nakuru, the capital of Kenya’s Rift Valley Province. The project has been

financially supported from the outset by faith networks Gary and Caris are linked to, centring on a belief in supporting the ‘vision’ of the founder of the home - an ex-street child himself. From a small boys home, the project has expanded to increase the number of children it feeds and houses, set up a girls dormitory, provides the premises for a primary school and has a weekly feeding programme. It has three livelihood-supporting activities: a borehole water well, a fish pond and a garage.

The bore hole was the only of these generating income at the time of research. The garage was the ‘vision’ of Liam, a young person from Springboard. The bore hole and fish pond were associated with other ‘partners’, mostly small groups of

Christians from the UK, US, Canada and Norway. Volunteers stay in a local low-budget hotel and travel to the site, usually undertaking manual labour. The trip I accompanied painted three rooms, sanded and varnished wooden lockers, dug a trench for a water pipe, and ran a morning of children’s activities.

The ‘funding model’ of the trips has also come from an ethos of embracing

opportunities,¹³ linked again to Gary, constantly full of new ideas and a natural

‘networker’. Networks with wealthy local volunteers from southwest London mean Springboard ‘punch above their weight’ to draw large amounts of unrestricted funding. A businessman, hearing about an early ‘success story’, helped raise money and was invited on the next trip by Gary. This grew into cultivating links with business people who fund the costs of their place and the place of a young person.

This relieves a large proportion of the costs of the trips, otherwise funded by a combination of sponsored events and local authority funding¹⁴. A few years before my research they had secured a partnership with a high-level executive in a major bank who was funding £10,000 per year towards the trips, and were in discussions about formalising this through linking it into corporate social responsibility agendas.

The partnerships with business are embraced for their financial benefits, but also in terms of an emphasis on ‘enterprise’.¹⁵

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My second case study was with a youth group associated with Kingsfield Baptist Church. The church is located right in the centre of Kingsfield estate in Hackney. A socially-minded pastor lobbied for it to be rebuilt there after the original church building on the edge of the estate was destroyed in the Blitz. The estate is one of many large areas of social housing in Hackney, where nearly 45% of all households in Hackney rent from a social landlord, and the borough as a whole is the second most deprived local authority in England according to the government’s Indices of Multiple Deprivation. Hackney is well known for its multiethnic life, which forms a proud part of its identity. Non-white ethnic groups make up 41% of its population - and in particular has a large black population, 24% of the borough described themselves as ‘Black British’¹⁶ (London Borough of Hackney Policy Team, 2014).

13 Springboard’s adventurous opportunity-embracing ethos leads to back stories too outlandish to recount in full detail in this thesis, involving everything from pop-stars, youtube sensations, conmen and Richard Branson.

14 Such as ‘youth opportunity funds’ where young people apply individually for a few hundred pounds from the local council.

15 However, these financially powerful supporters are not upheld straightforwardly as figures of admiration. For instance, one day I watched Gary, with typical carnivalesque cheek, show a banking

‘business mentor’, how if you put your fingers in either side of your mouth and say ‘bankers’ it comes out ‘wankers’!

16 Within this, 11% identified as ‘Black British - African’, 8% as ‘Black British - Caribbean’, and the remainder as various categories of ‘Mixed’ or ‘Other’ Black. There are other significant ethnic

Hackney has also recently seen a dramatic and rapid rise in well-qualified young professional residents and associated processes of gentrification, part of a larger trend of ‘the movement’ of poverty to outer London boroughs and dramatic social polarisation in inner east London (London Borough of Hackney Policy Team, 2014;

Wills, 2015). The estate in which the youth group is located sits amid busy streets filled with Turkish restaurants, Afro-Caribbean hair salons and several ‘hipster’

cafes.

The church is an important hub of community activity on the estate and a space where multiple ‘sides’ of Hackney meet. On any given Sunday, among the congregation of around 100, you see smartly-dressed Nigerian families, elderly Jamaican men and old white ladies, young black men in sports clothing, single mothers with small children, scruffily dressed white professionals and a significant number of mixed-race families. This diversity extends to the theological positions - from those celebratory of gay marriage to conservatives. This ‘unity in diversity’ is an explicit part of Kingsfield’s institutional identity: there is frequent emphasis and celebration of the church as a loving and accepting ‘family’ and ‘community’. It is underpinned by participatory governance structures combined with a low-resource base, which has given diverse church members leadership roles. It is also enacted through relaxed affective atmospheres, such as informality, laughter, electrifyingly loud and passionate worship, and open space for spontaneous ‘voice’, as well as ritualised ways of being together such as regular community lunches. Children and young people are central to the ‘meaningful contacts’ (Valentine, 2008) formed across classed and racialised divides. Of course the church should not be

romanticised as ‘outside’ of social power relationships (Ehrkamp and Nagel, 2014).

The middle-class white families in the church play a disproportionate role in leadership, and despite a high presence of immigrants, non-nuclear families, those living on state support, and a few openly gay congregants, the church is not explicitly ‘liberal’ from the pulpit on issues such as economic policy, migration or sexuality.

minority communities of South Asian (10%), Turkish and Kurdish, and Charedi Orthodox Jewish people.

  Figure 4: Members of Kingsfield Church at a community event

At the time of research, youth work was run by Emma, who provided both religious youth activities such as bible studies, but also ‘community’ youth work, which included: a ‘girls group’ with activities and discussions on issues such as self-esteem, a mixed-gender sports group, a social club, and special holiday activities and outings. A separate charitable trust attached to the church undertakes financial and managerial responsibility for ‘community’ activities. Emma had in common with Gary a high level of confidence, energy, charisma and a laid-back attitude.

Similarly, she was extremely well-loved by the community and excellent at connecting in a genuine and warm way with people across different backgrounds and had increased the engagement of many young black men in the youth group, despite being a white woman from an upper middle-class background. Her involvement in youth work had stemmed from personal experience of her sisters’

turbulent teenage years and had become her full-time occupation after a formal qualification from Goldsmiths. She combined a deeply participatory and open approach, engaging with young people’s voices and ‘where they were at’, whether soft drug use or family crises - with a strong focus on religiosity and a theologically orthodox reading of Biblical teaching. For instance, she would uphold a

conservative position on young people’s sexual activity despite her open discussion with many of them about it.

The young people involved in the trip were from diverse backgrounds in terms of

their familial models, relationships to the education system and many of them were by no means stereotypical ‘church kids’ that spring to mind from a middle-class perspective. For instance, several of the young people were dabbling with drugs and drink, sexually active, in close proximity to - or involved in - territorial and

potentially violent youth activity, and had a rough-edged humour and ‘attitude’. But they were also positioned and positioning themselves as ‘good kids’ relative to much of Hackney’s notoriety for ‘street culture’. The church ensconced them in a

celebratory support for their ‘passions’ - as well as their potential and responsibility as ‘young leaders’¹⁷, a framing strongly present in the trip to Zimbabwe. The trip was planned by Emma as a one-off ‘mission trip’, in response to requests from the young people, though there had been a trip to India about 3 or 4 years earlier, organised by a prior youth worker.

The trip to Zimbabwe was arranged in conjunction with an organisation set up in 2001 as a logistical company to facilitate Christian missions by a group of white Zimbabwean friends, and has expanded rapidly, now employing 250 staff and 50 vehicles across several Southern African countries. The company run some ‘secular tours’ and offer a lower rate to Christian groups. One of their main clients is the USA’s International Baptist Mission. They donate profits, which amounted to approximately $300,000 USD in 2012. The organisation provided the Kingsfield group with a driver, overland truck and ‘guide’, a young white Zimbabwean woman who handled logistics and food, as well as linking the group with local projects to volunteer at. The main one of these was a faith-based project, run by a white pastor in an informal settlement (formed by political displacement) in Harare. As well as providing basic services, this focusses on ‘economic empowerment’ activities such as

‘life skills training’ and helping get people work placements. The organisation also arranged one-day volunteering opportunities at a street children’s drop in-centre and a community garden. In addition, Emma arranged 3 days of volunteering for us with a couple (British wife and Zimbabwean husband, both white) she knew

through faith-based networks who were setting up a local primary school. We

17 For instance, a bible passage I heard frequently referred to was the calling of Jeremiah, used to illustrate how young people can ‘lead nations’: Jeremiah 1:4-8 (NIV) ^‘… I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” “Alas, Sovereign LORD,” I said, “I do not know how to speak; I am too young.” But the LORD said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am too young.’ … Do not be afraid…’

moved between four locations in Zimbabwe in the overland truck, interspersing short voluntary stints with leisure activities and bible studies planned by Emma.

Having given a contextual portrait of my cases and an overview of data collection I now discuss specific methods in greater depth.