Tonight, on Monday 6 November 2023, we launched the Doorstep Youth Advisory Board. We’d like to herald this with confetti and parades and cheering – it feels like such a major milestone to have reached.
This has been a long-held organisational dream and wish – to ensure that young people’s voices can be right at the centre of the Doorstep’s decision-making, leadership and strategy. It felt very exciting to finally be at a place where we can make this official. Big thanks to our funder, Arts Council England, for supporting and encouraging this kind of dynamic governance model.
As a participatory arts organisation, we believe fundamentally in the importance of youth voice and it’s taken a long time to get to a point where we can formally give this level of ownership, power and decision-making to young people, right at the heart of what we do.
Tonight we gathered with an amazing crew of 10 young people aged 14 to 20, and celebrated this launch together as a team. We listened to them each talk about why they’d like to serve as a Youth Co-Chair of Doorstep Arts. They were thoughtful, articulate, inspiring, amazing. It was clear how much they care about representing other young people, about making change, about having a real voice. We then held a democratic vote to elect the Youth Co-Chairs and celebrated the fact that all of these incredible activated young people will carry on as part of our Youth Advisory Board across the academic year 2023-24.
They will be supported by the three Doorstep Co-Directors (Polly, Jade & Erin) and their decision-making for the organisation will also be bolstered by the Adult Special Advisors who will continue to give support on budgets, finance, HR and other specialist topics.
The Youth Advisory Board will oversee artistic activity, help shape decisions, and monitor progress. They’ll make suggestions and propose new ideas, give insights and share perspectives as young people to shape the organisation. We are SO excited by this new way of working.
We held an election of Co-Chairs, listened to speeches from young people, used NPO dinosaur as an inflatable talking stick, thought up possible alternate names for the NCS Torbay provision, talked about the future plans for Young Producers, overviewed the ‘Our Story’ company report, did a little bit of maths homework on the side, wrote up a collective collaborative youth charter, and ate pizza. We looked at Hart’s Ladder of Participation and discussed how we’d like to work together over the coming months – what kinds of expectations we might hold each other to. We talked about how much time and energy was possible, given the real pressures of school.
We can’t wait to announce the names of the new Youth Co-Chairs (big announcement coming soon!) and share some of their thoughts with you in their own words. We’ll also share more about this process as it evolves… we know lots of other organisations who are thinking about this kind of evolution of models of governance right now, and we’re keen to be as transparent, honest and open about our journey as we possibly can.
In the spirit of that, we’ll be sharing our Youth Charter, our governance model, and thoughts from the Youth Co-Chairs in the coming months. Stay tuned – more to come!