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Following on from last week's part 1, Anna and Natasha continue their conversation on young people's visions of the future, look at their view of protest, and what can inspire people to make change.

To find out more about Anna's research, read her blog post here.

 

"We Share Freely". The change we want to see in the world is bigger than we are. So, we're sharing our knowledge, resources and ideas to help more people and organisations take steps forward towards our vision of a green and thriving planet, where everyone can enjoy happy and healthy lives within the Earth's limits.

 

As part of this, we've launched our "5 Minute GAP" series, a collection of five minute conversations that will share how we work and what we're working on. We'll talk about what we're trying to achieve and why, how we function as an organisation, and the thinking behind our plans and strategy.

 

We'll be regularly sharing these conversations, which will feature different members of our team and trustee board, as well as external experts.

 

We hope you enjoy listening in to our chats, getting to know our team and finding out what makes us who we are. 

 

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Audio only version:

 

If you prefer to read rather than watch, the transcription is here: 

 

Anna: So one of the things that I really noticed as well was as well as having these kind of materials and learning about social change and about different possibilities, which should potentially be a thing to campaign for or to introduce into the education system, whether that's kind of formally or informally.

 I think also...so one of the really big narratives that all of the every single interviewee mentioned was that they thought had a pretty negative perception of protest and activism. And I think that and like any young person, probably anyone in the UK will have a like mostly, unless you are an activist. There's a really negative perception of activism and I think that's something that could be changed and worked on because in order to have a sort of not only have the hope for the kind of positive vision of the future, but to believe it can happen is to believe that you have a part to play in it. And they often would see their part in quite an individual way and really important way, as well, like kind of with more individual lifestyle actions, which can be super important. 

But they yeah, in terms of having a  collective sense of possibility, in terms of like collaboration, they often didn't see see that as a possibility, but they one way that they had found hope for the future was... one of the things that cropped up a few times was that through the pandemic, when people were kind of gathering together and collaborating to, you know, pick up where things were going wrong, that gave them a really good sense of hope for the future, which I think is very interesting because actually, like, not just learning about but experiencing and being part of something, a social change can be so important. And, and, and as well as that enacting something different, being like, if you have this positive vision of the future, where say there’s sustainable farming, then having the opportunity to go and work on a sustainable farm or something like that could be really important. Enacting these different ways of life. 

Natasha: And enacting them together as well, is important isn’t it? Because when we're just trying to do things on our own, it just doesn't feel like it's going to make enough of a difference to you know... young people are very aware of the scale of the problem and the scale of climate change. And then in research, we’ve done with young people before they've said and then we're told to like use a paper straw instead of a plastic straw, you know, we know that's not going to make any difference that the scale of the challenge is just not commensurate with the kind of actions that we're told to do as individuals. But when we’re taking those actions with other people and doing them all together, we found that's been, yeah, much more effective in helping young people to feel that sense of self-efficacy. 

Like I can make a difference because I'm not doing it on my own. I'm doing it with other people. And that sense of collective action is so much  more powerful and gives us so much more hope. So that's really interesting that you found that because it's very similar to what we found in our research as  well when we worked with young people is, yeah, they think doing things only by reason isn't as inspiring as, as, you know, coming together with others and seeing it in real life and feeling it and experiencing it, not just being told about it as well. 

Anna: Yeah, definitely.

And I think it's kind of got this circular effect where if you kind of engage in these things, then you start to believe something better is possible and then you start to imagine a sort of more positive future, and then that makes you feel more is possible and it sort of goes round in a circle like that. And yeah. That was also noticeable when I spoke to these young people that those people who had engaged more tended to be more positive than those who hadn't. So sometimes taking that first step and encouraging others to do the same can be all that's needed. 

Natasha: And that's that's what the research says isn't it, that actually the best way to. Well, with so many young people experiencing eco anxiety and feeling that, you know, very strong concern about the future, the best way to help them, because it's you know, it's not a pathological thing. It's an actual it's a pretty sensible response to to what's happening in the world to be feeling like that. And the best way to overcome that is to be feel like part of the solution is to take action and taking action together with others is even better.