Young People and Opportunity Event, Labour Party conference, Blackpool, 28th September 2002

Proposal for Young People’s event on ‘Opportunity’

To be held at Labour Party conference, 1- 4 pm, 28th September 2002

Event aims

  • To form a connection between local people and the party conference process.
  • The event will aim to produce a meaningful summary of the attitudes and ideas of young Blackpool residents about their futures and the opportunities offered to them. Local decision-makers (including the local MP, Gordon Marsden, and leader of the Council, Roy Fisher) will be in attendance to listen to the key themes that emerge.
  • It will be a showcase public meeting to demonstrate to those attending conference and local decision-makers that there are innovative and effective ways of engaging people in thinking about policy issues
  • It will engage a young audience often accused of apathy and will demonstrate that politics can be engaging and interesting. We hope to make them think constructively about how more opportunities could be created in the area and encourage them to become more actively involved in their community.
  • It will show policy makers that the public, and in particular young people, have a meaningful contribution to make to policy debate.
  • It will give the young people a chance to express their opinions and be taken seriously.
  • The results will provide a useful guide to youth attitudes for employers and educators in the area.

Participants

  • 100 young people from Blackpool
  • Participants will be from the 16-25 age group
  • They will be recruited through a range of voluntary and public agencies, major employers and educational establishments in the area
  • We want the participants to be broadly representative of the young population of Blackpool
  • We will make efforts to reach excluded groups (e.g. young offenders, disabled young people, single mothers etc)
Topics for discussion
  • Opportunity for young people in Blackpool; social and economic
  • Aspirations and priorities – how can they be fulfilled?
  • Can the government do anything?
  • We will also ask the participants to think of practical ideas for improvement
  • The discussion will include wider issues such as employment, education, community and political values (to link in with topics being discussed at conference)
  • We want to avoid the session becoming negative and a stream of complaints about local problems, whilst making the topic seem relevant

Structure (tbc)

The event will not run along the traditional speaker panel, question and answer format. We will have short introductory and concluding speeches, but the majority of the event will be in small break-out groups and debates. The aim would be to combine deliberative discussions in small groups with some means of pulling themes together and mapping opinion as a whole. This will be done using laptop computers or a key-pad voting system to record opinions and ideas and then asking the whole audience to vote on other groups’ suggestions.

One option would be to adopt the AmericaSpeaks model with participants sitting around tables of ten to follow a consistent topic guide (led by a facilitator) covering a range of issues (e.g. employment, education, wages, future of Blackpool etc).

Speakers

  • We will not invite speakers to make long speeches but we will want introductions, reactions and conclusions from eminent figures.
  • Roy Fisher, leader of Blackpool Council will introduce the event.
  • Tony Blair might be able to conclude the event as part of his ‘meeting the public’ engagements at the conference.
  • Gordon Marsden, MP, will also be able to speak at the event

Event schedule

  • The event will be on the Saturday before conference starts (28th September)
  • From 1pm and 4pm (although may need to extend)

Outputs

  • After the event, we will write up the results and distribute them to delegates and politicians going into the main conference sessions.
  • We will ensure a high level of media coverage so that the results are well publicised. Blackpool Council will co-ordinate the local media and ippr will co-ordinate national media. Channel 4 will film the event. (Channel 4 is a core sponsor of ippr’s main fringe events.)
  • By working with local decision-makers in the early stages of event planning we will ensure their commitment to listening and responding to the findings
  • We will write up the results of the event and hand them out to delegates at all of our other fringe events and at the main policy sessions.

Incentives for young people to attend

  • Participants will be paid travel and childcare costs
  • We will incentivise attendance with vouchers for tickets to the theatre (courtesy of Leisure Parcs)