“Our voices were the most important thing in the room.”
This comment – part of the feedback from one of the 16 amazing young people that took part in the Youth Voice Design Jam in August 2024 – made me smile.
The Jam was a collaborative, joyful and intense three days where young people teamed up with Sport England and a range of sector partners.
Together, we worked through a double-diamond design process to explore, co-create and present four brilliant ideas focused on embedding young voices within our own work and across the sport and physical activity sector.
This is something that’s close to my heart; an aim I’ve been living and breathing, both during my day job and as a volunteer coach in grassroots girls’ football.
It’s a goal that’s born out of the imperative to respect young people’s right to have their voices heard and acted upon in all matters affecting them, particularly when they are being active.
We know that doing this is a key enabler for creating positive experiences – one of the ‘big issues’ identified in our Uniting the Movement strategy – where our ambition is to put young people’s needs, expectations and safety first in the design and delivery of activity, particularly for those from underserved communities.
The Youth Voice Design Jam was the culmination of months of learning and co-design through our partnership with the Innovation Unit that had started in October 2023 with three key questions:
We’re now pleased to be able to share our Youth Voice Innovation Storybook.
This document charts our journey exploring the three questions above, plus what we learnt from our partners and how we went about delivering the Youth Voice Design Jam.
It’s a goal that’s born out of the imperative to respect young people’s right to have their voices heard and acted upon in all matters affecting them.
The storybook is packed with practical tools, activities and top tips for organisations seeking to engage young people in meaningful co-design, and it builds on the first phase of our work with Innovation Unit, which culminated in the development of Sport England’s Innovation Playbook.
This includes a set of tried-and-tested tools and eight key practices to embed innovation in our daily work.
Our work on youth voice tested putting these into practice, learning from young people, colleagues and partners.
We didn’t start this process from a position of expertise. But that’s OK, because owning this and working openly has proved to be a real strength.
We were inspired by this start point and were able to learn so much from a wide range of brilliant colleagues, partners and young people, including:
We’ve got so much energy from young people through this work!
I’ve been amazed, but not surprised at the speed that they’ve understood the context of our sector, and the creativity in the ideas and solutions they’ve developed.
More importantly, we know that young people have gained lots from this process, whether that’s building confidence, learning new skills or meeting with peers.
This was all summed up brilliantly by one young person when they said that being part of this process enabled them to learn so much about themselves that they felt they could now work with anyone and achieve things that before they didn’t think they could. Isn't that amazing?
Whilst the Youth Voice Design Jam was a significant step for us, it certainly doesn’t signal the end of the road.
Instead we’re going to continue to learn and build expertise in this area, advocate for young people’s right to be heard and work with partners and young people to explore how our ideas can be progressed.
There are already lots of things happening, including a new question on youth voice as part of the Active Lives Children and Young People survey and working with colleagues to explore where youth voice sits across a range of projects and campaigns, like an exciting new Studio You partnership, the Play Their Way campaign and the work of the Positive Experiences Collective.
Young people are also at the heart of shaping the Government’s National Youth Strategy via Deliver You.
This is a national listening exercise that’ll open to young people this spring to have their say on the services, facilities and opportunities they need to benefit their lives and futures.
We hope that you find the Youth Voice Innovation Storybook useful and we encourage you to use and share it if you’re interested in making sure that young people’s voices are the most important thing in the room.