Investigating Young People’s Social and Cultural Infrastructure

The Academy commissioned London Development Trust to carry out a project investigating young people’s views and needs in relation to social and cultural infrastructure. The project aimed to:

1. Examine what young people understand by social and cultural infrastructure
2. Co-create, with young people, a reporting tool for identifying the resources they need to thrive socially and culturally
3. Explore how policymakers can better accommodate youth voices

Four focus group sessions were held, comprising 58 young people in total, from four diverse London communities to trial and develop an innovative card deck method which enabled the young people to self-report their views and needs regarding social and cultural infrastructure.

Headline findings from the project include:

• Ontological security – a sense of stability and continuity in one’s life and experience of the social world – is crucial for young people’s access to social and cultural infrastructure. Feeling pervasively and acutely unsafe is a critical barrier to young people accessing social and cultural infrastructure.
• Young people’s scales of access can be much smaller than adults.
• ‘Hard’ elements of social and cultural infrastructure (such as physical buildings and utilities) are only valuable to young people with the right ‘soft’ elements (such as safety and security features) to ‘activate’ them. Additionally, people are an important dimension of social and cultural infrastructure for young people, enabling young people to feel comfortable in spaces and places.
• Improving accessibility and raising awareness are both key. Young people can be unaware of the social and cultural infrastructure that is available.
• Local businesses (eg shops and fast food restaurants) are important social and cultural spaces for young people.
• ‘Aspirational Infrastructure’ is important to young people. Young people value the existence of spaces that support their social and cultural dreams, (for example airports which open up the possibility of international travel) even if they don’t access these spaces day to day.

The report then sets out recommendations on how to value and measure social and cultural infrastructure in relation to young people, and on how to produce and maintain young people’s social and cultural infrastructure. Recommendations include:

• Safety must be considered when planning infrastructure for young people. This includes how to mitigate actual, everyday threats but also how to mitigate subjective experiences of ontological insecurity.
• Ensuring that there is low cost, or ideally free (as well as safe) travel to get to key social and cultural spaces.
• Taking advantage of ‘pivotal people’ by training sports coaches, teachers, community leaders, etc. to help signpost young people to social and cultural sites and activities.

Note: This report was commissioned and funded by the British Academy as part of the evidence base for its social and cultural infrastructure programme. However it is not intended as a British Academy policy position, and does not necessarily represent the views of the Academy.