http://www.demos.co.uk/projects/childrenofeuropa/ en-us Copyright 2008 Sat, 19 Jul 2008 07:55:57 -0100 Latest items from Children of Europa on http://www.demos.co.uk/ - the thinktank for everyday democracy Sat, 19 Jul 2008 07:55:57 -0100 http://www.demos.co.uk/items/11999 http://www.demos.co.uk/items/11999


There are so many ways to be cynical about ask the pm on youtube, but I think it rules. This is an (awesome) video of Adam talking to the Prime Minister about how he wants to vote, which is sort of illogical if you think about it. This type of thing, and alot of the other semi-political content on youtube definitely isn't representative democracy... and er, it doesn't quite fit into participatory democracy either. Expressive Democracy? Any takers? This is the conundrum that the Children of Europa project is currently trying to untangle.
]]> Wed, 18 Jun 2008 13:04:10 -0100 charlie.tims@demos.co.uk ( Charlie Tims ) http://www.demos.co.uk/items/11893 http://www.demos.co.uk/items/11893
Something that is hovering in front of us is the issue of intellectual property and copyright. So I couldn't resist highlighting the recent news about Google and Viacom's legal spat. The short story: Viacom is annoyed that people keep posting unauthorised copies of its programmes. They've counted it up for us: apparently there are 150,000 examples of copyright infringing, grainy 5 minute clips from its archive on YouTube.

There are to my mind two main reasons why the strategy followed by people like Viacom in these situations is wrong-headed and damaging - both to themselves and much more importantly to everyone else.

1. They fail to acknowledge the cultural and social effects of the increasing ability to share content - whether it be songs, video, pictures - using new technology. More importantly, they utterly fail to acknowledge the damage that changing the laws around technology to reflect rights holders' interests so narrowly would have for the way these technologies work. The types of content at issue form an integral part of how the world around us is represented and expressed to us, and to the way that ideas spread. This popular culture is part of the currency through which we build meaning and understanding around our place in the world. So it is important that the channels, where they appear, for people to comment on and rework and discuss and critique that content are respected. If we accept that culture plays an important role in influencing or shaping or expressing our ideas and values and norms, then we have to look at laws and policy that enshrine our right to critique and comment upon it. We shouldn't uphold or design more rights that limit unduly who decides what commentary or use is 'authorised'.

2. We should have little sympathy for most of the business argument either. Whether it is film or music (and I am generalising somewhat...), in the main these outfits have been so slow to adapt that they have consistently damaged their own businesses, and made life harder for the people they sell to. Movies are a classic example. These industries grew up because they helped us to solve some problems around making and distributing culture. Some of these problems no longer exist. Their argument that wiring technology to make them reappear seems rather perverse.

In both cases, there have been people shouting about forward-thinking, progressive solutions and new ideas for at least the last 5 years. Instead of listening, they keep trying to sue them.]]> Tue, 27 May 2008 18:14:24 -0100 peter.bradwell@demos.co.uk ( Pete Bradwell ) http://www.demos.co.uk/items/11599 http://www.demos.co.uk/items/11599 Schlesische 27, a youth arts organisation in Kreuzberg, to the south east of Berlin. It's nestled in a set of buildings off Schlesische street, in an area with growing numbers of artists and an established Turkish population.



There were six young filmmakers in the workshop, all aged between 17 and 22. Thanks, first off, to the facilitators and filmmakers for being so welcoming. I was only there two days so unfortunately I haven’t yet had a chance to see how the ideas developed and how the films turned out.



It was a really different experience to the workshop in Helsinki. A couple of main thoughts struck me during the visit.

Firstly, it struck me that the value of the workshops themselves can differ greatly. The role of the facilitators, and the things that the young people draw from the workshop, are certainly not always the same. These workshops are not always just about making good quality videos; making a statement, or defining yourself through the video you get to make. It can sometimes, initially at least, be more about the confidence and skills the young people get in the workshop - and in the words of one of the facilitators, the ‘journey’ that each young person takes or begins.



This might complicate the idea of comparing videos made in different places by different young people, who may have wildly different experiences of media consumption and production, education, other Europeans and places. That said, it is really interesting to see young people start to use audio-visual media on this journey.

The second point is really related to this. The area where the filmmakers were drawn from sits near the old border East-West Berlin. I wondered whether the generation aged now around 20 years old differed in any significant way from older generations given that for them, the 'wall' and the divisions associated with it are in some respects a part of history rather than lived experience.

Opinions seemed to differ in the people I spoke to, but what I heard seemed to underline how different young people's experiences are. It's a really obvious point, but it is pointless talking about ‘young people’ as a monolithic entity.

And it is worth reminding ourselves of that when we look to new media, and video making. None of this changes the value that audio-visual exchange can have for intercultural understanding in the slightest, but this kind of detail helps us understand the varied experiences of media production and exchange.

We’ve certainly been thinking about how that changes what video workshops offer different kinds of young people; how that changes what kind of videos they make; how that changes how we can compare the outputs across Europe.

We’re off to Romania in a couple of weeks (23rd-28th April). If you would like to talk to us about our work – in particular any of these research visits – do get in touch with us, either below in the comments section or by email.]]> Tue, 08 Apr 2008 15:40:31 -0100 peter.bradwell@demos.co.uk ( Pete Bradwell ) http://www.demos.co.uk/items/11537 http://www.demos.co.uk/items/11537 website describes how the original project  worked, and it sounds like a weighty undertaking:

'In Bolton, a team of paid investigators went into a variety of public situations: meetings, religious occasions, sporting and leisure activities, in the street and at work, and recorded people's behaviour and conversation in as much detail as possible. The material they produced is a varied documentary account of life in Britain.

The National Panel of Diarists was composed of people from all over Britain who either kept diaries or replied to regular open-ended questionnaires send to them by the central team of Mass-Observers.'

For our project Children of Europa  we've been watching short videos made by young Europeans as they try to document their everyday lives and the things which are important to them. Many of them naturally gravitate towards filming self-portraits. Of course, self-portraiture has long been an important way of understanding ourselves and each other - whether it's a written diary entry, a painting or a video posted on you tube. I wonder whether the technological tools mean it's any more widespread now? Or the end product is any more immediate or powerful? I guess you were unlikely to share your diary entry with thousands of strangers back in 1937...  ]]> Mon, 31 Mar 2008 15:52:24 -0100 celia.hannon@demos.co.uk ( Celia Hannon ) http://www.demos.co.uk/items/11479 http://www.demos.co.uk/items/11479 Stranger Festival to give us his responses. Please feel free to post your own answers to any of these questions which might grab your attention.

1. Young people making and exchanging videos isn't happening in large enough numbers for it to be considered significantly different or special.

I think the global peak to teenagers’ bedrooms is something new to our time. You feel that you have a moment with them alone. Calling this cultural expression is a completely other discussion.

2. Why should we be surprised that young people are turning their back on society - isn't what they have always done?

Are they turning their back on society, building their own subsociety or just ignoring the political structures? And let’s face it, most adults are turning their backs to it too.

3. Are young people really interacting beyond their social group? Aren't they more likely to just be communicating with 'people like themselves'?

The people like me can now mean different things than before. People interact with people like them but the groups are much more fluid and parallel than before. A big challenge for many youth organisations and public organisations is to deal with the fact that teenagers today do not stick to one group and do not often stay in one group for long. Someone could call this AD/HD…

4. How 'real' is all this stuff anyway? Does it really reflect what children care about? Isn't most of it just exhibitionism? How is it better than say the UNICEF report on the condition of young people around the world?

A lot of the stuff online is deadly serious. But the online videos are like life – they are not only funny or only serious. I think the doing silly things publicly and not only amongst your friends is something new. That also brings me to the point about real….I think these videos should be seen – as you cleverly wrote – as tools for defining who you are rather than testimonies of who you are.

5. Why should there be a role for government in this? Shouldn't we just concentrate on ensuring that children have access to school, food and jobs?

Giving a context has been needed always between youth cultures and the decision makers. No one asked ministers in the 70s to get punk records and start listening. It is not easier now than it used to be.

6. Who has access to broadband? kids in north-western Europe. Not the children of Europa - it's pretty niche stuff really?

It still is but I think the impact of broadband across borders has been massively positive. The fact that still only a few have access should encourage us to provide possibilities for more rather than brand it as a luxury phenomenon. But true, the whole youth of Europe is not online.,

7. Emotional capital? Isn't that just a new way of talking about 'trust'?

I would put emphasis on two issues: trust and self-esteem. Publishing your bedroom videos takes a lot of guts. We should not undermine it. You need to feel self-confident and safe in order to enter the public sphere.
]]> Wed, 19 Mar 2008 16:30:42 -0100 celia.hannon@demos.co.uk ( Celia Hannon ) http://www.demos.co.uk/items/11420 http://www.demos.co.uk/items/11420
Young people have more ways to express themselves than at any point in history. Cheap digital technology combined with internet cafes and free social software have put the power of the publishing house, the TV station and the record label at the finger tips of young people across Europe.

The power to create videos and moving images gives young people access to express themselves through the 20th Century’s most potent form of mass media. The medium that had a greater impact on politics and society than any other - shifting the way the world saw civil rights, war and famine.

This expression happens on the open market when young people make videos independently. And it also happens in private markets when young people take part in projects in community groups, with cultural organisations and in schools. It is in these places that they are assisted in the production of videos, often about themselves and their own lives. In both markets videos are often uploaded on Youtube and distributed through social networking sites like Bebo, Friendster, Myspace and Facebook. The result is a generation of young people who are visually literate on a scale never seen before.

This transfers power to young people. They are free to ridicule or challenge authority figures from politicians, teachers and popstars to their peers at school. Their inclination to be irreverent or creative may not be new – but the presence of a global audience is. Every opinion, minutiae of daily life or personality nuance becomes broadcastable material.

Unsurprisingly, young people find themselves less willing to be spoken for and more likely to want to assert themselves and their own opinions. Those who claim to speak for young people can no longer do so simply on the basis that their voice has a wider reach. Today young people can use their creativity to find ways to project their voice for themselves. The only certainty about this generation is that they share the desire to imprint their personality on everything they touch. From a Facebook profile to a television channel; this group expects each everyday experience to be tailored to them.

As politics continues to specialise in the big picture and ignore the politics of emotion, the attitudes of this generation present a major challenge for political leaders. In the late part of the 20th Century people’s material needs became less dependent on formal politics. Now their identities appear to be less dependent on them too. Why would young people turn to political figures to ‘represent’ them, when they are so well versed in representing themselves?

Levels of political ‘apathy’ amongst the young in Europe shows us that they are rapidly losing faith in formal politics. The unease about this fact has fuelled a rise in formal youth consultation mechanisms; to redress the fact that decision makers are unwilling or unable to listen to them on an everyday concerns. With good reason, young people often don’t believe their political leaders are able to solve sprawling international problems such as climate change and globalization. So they choose to wrestle with those big questions via the internet rather than the ballot box. As a result politics is taking unfamiliar forms and it is taking place in alternative forums.

Optimists say we needn’t worry. If young people want to represent their own aspirations by making a youtube video rather than joining the youth wing of a local political party, so be it. Youth media projects ‘empower’ young people and give them a voice. The important thing is that it’s political, even if that’s with a small p. They argue that even if they have no mainstream presence new, fluid communities are being created and new forms of cultural exchange are taking place just beneath the surface. Conversely, pessimists predict the fragmentation of societies and nation-states as young people use their new autonomy to cut loose permanently from their local communities, their political representatives and their schools.

The optimists and the pessimists both make two crucial errors.

Firstly, they assume that power to express things is the same as a powerful expression. It isn’t.

Just because you can express something, doesn’t mean that expression will have any status. The optimists assume that the explosion in the production of audio-visual media will somehow filter through into the process of political change, but that assumes that it will have enough status for politicians and other leaders to listen to it. At the moment this is completely unclear: why watch this video and not that one? And when I’ve watched the video, what the hell am I supposed to do anyway? What if, as with most creative expression, the meaning or ‘message’ is submerged – who does the interpreting? And what happens if some sections of society find themselves edited out? The pessimists also assume that this information will find enough status out there in the ether for it to gather enough meaning, to completely draw young people away from the society around them. Generations speaking in different languages could find themselves estranged from each other.

Second, they assume that what young people express is what they are (i.e. individualistic). They shouldn’t.

The real story is not about what young people are expressing, but how they are able to express things. Not what they say they are, but how they become what they are. Focussing on the expression itself leads both the optimists and pessimists to read young people’s production and exchange of audio-visual media as part of the continual elevation of the individual over society. But this overlooks the processes and interactions that young people have to go through to create and distribute media. Far from contributing to the fragmentation of young people’s identities it is equally plausible that this is contributing to the growth and ease with which young people can adopt and shed multiple identities.

These are the condundrums of a democracy that is neither just participatory or representative, but expressive too.

Democracy is normally talked about in one of two ways. Firstly ‘representative democracy’ – taken to mean voting slips, elected representatives, referendums, elections and so forth. Second, ‘participatory democracy’ – the democratic culture of everyday life – so, the membership of community groups, affiliations, associations; the governance of schools, streets and workplaces and the campaigning of charities, NGOs and activists. But the kind of activity we are referring to, when we describe young people producing media, doesn’t seems to automatically fit into either. That’s why it’s hard to work out the status of this information, and who accordingly should be listening to it. Ultimately it’s too participatory to simply be ‘representative’, but it is too representative to be ‘participatory’. Maybe what we are talking about here is a future where young people will seek an Expressive Democracy – a democracy where people will seek representation through media rather than just representation through the ballot box.

Richer expression changes how we relate to each other (i.e. our identities) and how power is distributed (i.e. democracy). On that basis our research questions will look at the following issues:

How expressive democracy works:

•What are the tools of expressive democracy, who is using them and how?
•What are the platforms of expression and exchange and which different groups are using them?
•Can private, individualistic digital expressions be connected up to the European public sphere?
•When does creative or cultural expression become political expression?

Expressive democracy and power

•Will a more expressive democracy simply favour those young people shout loudest?
•Could an expressive democracy compound existing inequalities between young people with access to new media and those with fewer resources? What disparities are discernable across Europe?
•What demands will a more expressive democracy place on governments and other institutions? How will decision makers become literate in sifting through a blizzard of digital information?
•Will expressive democracy concentrate power in the hands of individual young people or will it create new opportunities for collective movements?

Identities in an expressive democracy

•How does expressive democracy affect young people’s perceptions of strangers?
•Does the state have role in mediating the transfer of expressions, if so how?
•Are young people projecting several different identities through digital media, if so, what does this mean for their sense of self?
•Do new digital practices and the internet erode or enhance young people’s sense of belonging to their local area, their nation or Europe? What are the new, digital or cultural borders of Europe?
 ]]> Mon, 10 Mar 2008 16:27:07 -0100 celia.hannon@demos.co.uk ( Celia Hannon ) http://www.demos.co.uk/items/11356 http://www.demos.co.uk/items/11356 week of 18-22 February,  we made a video of some of our initial thoughts on the process and research, and of our conversations with two of the young filmmakers and one of the facilitators.

Here's the short piece of film from our trip. (It's up on the DemosTV channel over at YouTube.)



If you have any thoughts, ideas or questions please do get in touch either through the comments below or emailing me or Celia. There is more information about the project here.

The workshops are part of the Stranger Festival project, which is our main case study. You can learn more about it here.]]> Fri, 29 Feb 2008 12:05:55 -0100 peter.bradwell@demos.co.uk ( Pete Bradwell ) http://www.demos.co.uk/items/11304 http://www.demos.co.uk/items/11304 Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art.



It was the first of our research trips to Stranger Festival workshops, designed to help young people across Europe make videos about themselves and their impressions of the world around them.

Everyone we met told us that the weather was uncommonly mild - a little frightening, and something that felt a touch irrelevant to us as we braved the snow and sea winds for our morning coffee at the museum cafe. The museum sits a hundred or so metres from the powerful-looking parliament building, and adjacent to a statue of war-era national figure Mannerheim. Across the other side of Kiasma is the headquarters of the largest national newspaper Helsingin Sanomat.

The workshop was run on the fifth floor of Kiasma.  Around 15 participants spent the week making minute-long videos, assisted by the tireless Marissa Evers, Fernando Colombo, and Satu Juutilainen. Our job was to watch the workshops unfold, talk to the young people and artists, and place the process in the contexts of Finnish and European youth, the Stranger festival, and the broader research questions driving our project.

Talking to the young people in the workshops about their videos, the proximity of the museum to the two national landmarks felt significant. Whether the videos were making explicit links to politics or political issues or not, they were all excited by the collaborative aspect to the workshops and video making, and the way they could share ideas and perspectives with their peers. And they all felt that the ideas and feelings they were putting in to their videos count as social, participative acts.

The week really emphasised the importance of some of our initial questions for the project. In what ways does this kind of process help young people express themselves, and how might it help them connect with each other and with a broader range of people? What are the factors influencing young people’s ability to participate in the media in this way? How can this kind of participation help them tackle the kind of challenges, personal and collective, they face now and will do in the future? We started to think about the kind of environments and spaces that make this collaborative, collective process happen?

There's a short video of our trip here. We’ll be posting a couple more times about the people we met in Helsinki and our thoughts about what we saw there. We ended up with a huge amount of material and ideas to process - big thank yous to all the people we spent time with. Over in the bookmarks section of the project page there will be links to some of the events, festivals, websites and people we heard about.

We’re really keen for people to let us know their thoughts about the workshops and research; about Finland, Helsinki and Finnish youth; and about audio-visual expression. Do leave comments below, or email Celia or me.]]> Sat, 23 Feb 2008 15:16:50 -0100 peter.bradwell@demos.co.uk ( Pete Bradwell ) http://www.demos.co.uk/items/11270 http://www.demos.co.uk/items/11270 Stranger Festival - a celebration of videos made by young people across Europe - is now online. It's well worth a look, not least for the videos themselves. The Festival, and the supporting workshops, are the main case study for our project looking at the way young people in Europe use audio-visual media to express themselves and communicate.

The videos are mainly the product of workshops run throughout Europe by artists, co-ordinated by the European Cultural Foundation. We'll be blogging lots next week from Helsinki, where Celia and I will be visiting the workshops and seeing what the videos and ideas there look like.

In the meantime, here are a couple of our favourite videos so far from the Stranger Festival site. (You can also check out their YouTube channel).




]]> Fri, 15 Feb 2008 10:55:38 -0100 peter.bradwell@demos.co.uk ( Pete Bradwell ) http://www.demos.co.uk/items/8373 http://www.demos.co.uk/items/8373
Podcast seven sees Hannah and Celia talking about the report Their Space: Education for a Digital Generation. The project, funded by the National College for School Leadership, explores the skills that young people are learning through their use of new technologies and makes suggestions for how schools and policy makers should respond.

The audio should be playing automatically right now...

Launch in external player

Or alternatively  you can download the mp3 file, or subscribe to the podcast feed.

You can learn more about our podcasts here.]]> Thu, 04 Jan 2007 15:56:31 -0100 hannah.green@demos.co.uk ( Hannah Green )