'Political things, like nuclear power and the use of alternative energy and stuff and the war. Umm, can't remember now. War, yeah. Were you for or against the Iraq war? The rights of women - the vote and stuff - rights between men and women. Everyone made all the questions, together.'
Faith Limbrick, 16, is remembering putting together the video to accompany the Pop Art and Politics in the 1960s exhibition at Wolverhampton Art Gallery, which opened last month.
Faith is a member of Artforum, the gallery's young people's consultation group. As part of their involvement in the newly renovated Pop Art gallery, the group drew up a list of questions on political issues, went out and interviewed people in the street about what they thought, edited the responses and put them on the gallery's interactive computers.
'We went to the skate park and we could see all the lads were quiet interested 'cos we had a camera,' says Faith. 'Some of them gave really good answers.' The group, with a fluctuating membership of between six and 15, meets twice a month in the early evening.
Artforum is one of a burgeoning number of young people's consultation groups used by museums and galleries when putting on a new exhibition. Although popular and increasingly a prerequisite of funding, getting young people involved is notoriously tricky.
Jo Wheeler, the programme coordinator of envision, a project working with galleries to increase young people's participation, sees long-term commitment as the key. 'It's no point parachuting in for eight weeks and working with a group and parachuting out again. It takes a long time. If you're going to embark on this kind of work, you need to be committed,' she says.
Leanne Turvey, the education coordinator at the Chisenhale Gallery in east London, coordinates Venue, a three-year programme working with young people aged 11 to 17. 'A major issue is you need to have continued funding. If you start working with a group and the money stops, the group disappears,' she says.
Turvey hopes to draw in vulnerable young people, although in common with others using this term, she finds 'vulnerable' hard to define. The gallery is in a mixed area of London's East End, and the Venue project is 50 per cent Bangladeshi, plus some white East End families and some middle-class members. 'We don't target a group, but we try to make sure the project reflects the diversity of the area,' says Turvey.
In Wolverhampton, as almost everywhere else, the main challenge has been to attract boys; Artforum is all-female. 'I just think, at around 16, boys are not so easy to engage as girls,' says Natalie Jones, Wolverhampton's young persons project worker. 'They're more interested in going off to the skate park.'
Envision's guidance for working with young people, the Making Connections Tool Kit, warns, 'young people in general lead chaotic lives'. There are also lifestyle differences between staff and the members of any young person's group.
Envision advises: 'Young people communicate mostly by text messaging and mobile phones. Agree with the young people how you will contact them throughout the project and how they will contact you.' Young people will also want to meet in the evenings, at exactly the time many professionals think of going home.
'Working with young people is a lot of commitment outside normal working hours. I had no social life and an understanding husband,' says Liz Neathey, the museum officer at North Somerset Museum in Weston-super-Mare.
Neathey coordinated Then and Now - Teens in the Time Warp, an exhibition that was developed with and by young people. At the start of the two-year project, Neathey linked up with a local youth worker.
'I didn't feel confident in my own work capacity with young people and the youth worker had no idea how to put an exhibition on,' she says. 'It was a steep learning curve on both sides. Everyone had to start from scratch.'
Initially, the group was made up of young people that the youth worker already had contact with. A press release to the local paper sparked more interest. Staff were determined to make involvement an attractive proposition.
'If you really want to have a successful meeting, you've got to have food,' says Nick Goff, the North Somerset Museum's manager. 'The hospitality element was invested in. Young people had to give up their evening time - pop and pizza makes a difference.'
The project was a big commitment for everyone involved. Initially, there were fortnightly, two-hour evening meetings. From last October, this increased to three meetings a week running up to the opening of the exhibition earlier this year.
The two-year-project was mainly funded by a £22,100 Heritage Lottery Fund Young Roots grant. Anything involving young people works out very costly if calculated per head. Any gain has to be measured beyond the small number of youthful bodies directly involved.
'There are mutual long-term benefits,' says Jo Wheeler. 'The gallery or museum and the young people can be great advocates for each other. You can bring a whole new audience, and perhaps a new generation of staff. We talk about increasing diversity of staff. This is a great way to do that.'
'It's a ripple effect,' says Natalie Jones. 'We want to show that we have a youth-friendly culture embedded in everything we do, so young people feel the art gallery is for them. It sends out a positive message to other young people.'
One way Wolverhampton disseminates this message is through MySpace. When the gallery's new website was being discussed at an Artforum, the young people suggested using MySpace instead of a conventional website. It saved the gallery money, and now attracts 350 visitors a month and has 55 registered friends.
'I didn't know how to use MySpace,' admits Jones. 'But they're the generation who use it. It puts young people at their ease, even before they set foot in the gallery.'
It wasn't only the website that Artforum influenced. During the redevelopment, young people were consulted on what they would like the Pop Art gallery to be like.
'Fantastic seating was the top of their list,' says Julia Bigham, the curator. 'They were keen on having seating on which you lounged around together - the sort of place you'd drop in with your friends.'
Young people were consulted, but were they listened to? 'It governed how I wrote the design brief. Then we shortlisted designers who we felt were listening to this,' says Bigham.
She admits, however, that the designers didn't simply put the young people's ideas into practice. 'You don't take everything literally,' she says. 'But we definitely got a very strong direction.' When the gallery opened in March it had huge sofas, ideal for sprawling on.
Jo Wheeler believes young people's involvement should challenge and change an institution. 'It's about a genuine involvement of young people. It's not just about education staff, but the whole organisation making a space for them where they feel comfortable. Marketing and front-of-house also need to change.
'That's going to effect the whole organisation,' she says. Liz Neathey recognises how working with young people questions entrenched assumptions. 'They ask, "But why do you do it like this?" That was a really good step back. It makes you think.'
Young people also get much more than a voice from the consultation
process. 'We're actually giving them really useful life skills - to be able to manage a project, meet deadlines, carefully handle objects, talk to people of different ages, write labels. They understand the importance of conservation and the care of collections. They've got these core skills which they can take with them,' says Neathey.
Faith Limbrick says her whole attitude towards galleries has changed now her opinion has been taken into account. 'I like being involved in what the gallery's about,' she says. 'Normally, when you go in an art gallery, you just get to see what the artist's done. But Artforum lets you be included and have a say in it, which is really good.'
Dea Birkett is director of Kids in Museums
www.kidsinmuseums.org.uk
Faith Limbrick, 16, is remembering putting together the video to accompany the Pop Art and Politics in the 1960s exhibition at Wolverhampton Art Gallery, which opened last month.
Faith is a member of Artforum, the gallery's young people's consultation group. As part of their involvement in the newly renovated Pop Art gallery, the group drew up a list of questions on political issues, went out and interviewed people in the street about what they thought, edited the responses and put them on the gallery's interactive computers.
'We went to the skate park and we could see all the lads were quiet interested 'cos we had a camera,' says Faith. 'Some of them gave really good answers.' The group, with a fluctuating membership of between six and 15, meets twice a month in the early evening.
Artforum is one of a burgeoning number of young people's consultation groups used by museums and galleries when putting on a new exhibition. Although popular and increasingly a prerequisite of funding, getting young people involved is notoriously tricky.
Jo Wheeler, the programme coordinator of envision, a project working with galleries to increase young people's participation, sees long-term commitment as the key. 'It's no point parachuting in for eight weeks and working with a group and parachuting out again. It takes a long time. If you're going to embark on this kind of work, you need to be committed,' she says.
Leanne Turvey, the education coordinator at the Chisenhale Gallery in east London, coordinates Venue, a three-year programme working with young people aged 11 to 17. 'A major issue is you need to have continued funding. If you start working with a group and the money stops, the group disappears,' she says.
Turvey hopes to draw in vulnerable young people, although in common with others using this term, she finds 'vulnerable' hard to define. The gallery is in a mixed area of London's East End, and the Venue project is 50 per cent Bangladeshi, plus some white East End families and some middle-class members. 'We don't target a group, but we try to make sure the project reflects the diversity of the area,' says Turvey.
In Wolverhampton, as almost everywhere else, the main challenge has been to attract boys; Artforum is all-female. 'I just think, at around 16, boys are not so easy to engage as girls,' says Natalie Jones, Wolverhampton's young persons project worker. 'They're more interested in going off to the skate park.'
Envision's guidance for working with young people, the Making Connections Tool Kit, warns, 'young people in general lead chaotic lives'. There are also lifestyle differences between staff and the members of any young person's group.
Envision advises: 'Young people communicate mostly by text messaging and mobile phones. Agree with the young people how you will contact them throughout the project and how they will contact you.' Young people will also want to meet in the evenings, at exactly the time many professionals think of going home.
'Working with young people is a lot of commitment outside normal working hours. I had no social life and an understanding husband,' says Liz Neathey, the museum officer at North Somerset Museum in Weston-super-Mare.
Neathey coordinated Then and Now - Teens in the Time Warp, an exhibition that was developed with and by young people. At the start of the two-year project, Neathey linked up with a local youth worker.
'I didn't feel confident in my own work capacity with young people and the youth worker had no idea how to put an exhibition on,' she says. 'It was a steep learning curve on both sides. Everyone had to start from scratch.'
Initially, the group was made up of young people that the youth worker already had contact with. A press release to the local paper sparked more interest. Staff were determined to make involvement an attractive proposition.
'If you really want to have a successful meeting, you've got to have food,' says Nick Goff, the North Somerset Museum's manager. 'The hospitality element was invested in. Young people had to give up their evening time - pop and pizza makes a difference.'
The project was a big commitment for everyone involved. Initially, there were fortnightly, two-hour evening meetings. From last October, this increased to three meetings a week running up to the opening of the exhibition earlier this year.
The two-year-project was mainly funded by a £22,100 Heritage Lottery Fund Young Roots grant. Anything involving young people works out very costly if calculated per head. Any gain has to be measured beyond the small number of youthful bodies directly involved.
'There are mutual long-term benefits,' says Jo Wheeler. 'The gallery or museum and the young people can be great advocates for each other. You can bring a whole new audience, and perhaps a new generation of staff. We talk about increasing diversity of staff. This is a great way to do that.'
'It's a ripple effect,' says Natalie Jones. 'We want to show that we have a youth-friendly culture embedded in everything we do, so young people feel the art gallery is for them. It sends out a positive message to other young people.'
One way Wolverhampton disseminates this message is through MySpace. When the gallery's new website was being discussed at an Artforum, the young people suggested using MySpace instead of a conventional website. It saved the gallery money, and now attracts 350 visitors a month and has 55 registered friends.
'I didn't know how to use MySpace,' admits Jones. 'But they're the generation who use it. It puts young people at their ease, even before they set foot in the gallery.'
It wasn't only the website that Artforum influenced. During the redevelopment, young people were consulted on what they would like the Pop Art gallery to be like.
'Fantastic seating was the top of their list,' says Julia Bigham, the curator. 'They were keen on having seating on which you lounged around together - the sort of place you'd drop in with your friends.'
Young people were consulted, but were they listened to? 'It governed how I wrote the design brief. Then we shortlisted designers who we felt were listening to this,' says Bigham.
She admits, however, that the designers didn't simply put the young people's ideas into practice. 'You don't take everything literally,' she says. 'But we definitely got a very strong direction.' When the gallery opened in March it had huge sofas, ideal for sprawling on.
Jo Wheeler believes young people's involvement should challenge and change an institution. 'It's about a genuine involvement of young people. It's not just about education staff, but the whole organisation making a space for them where they feel comfortable. Marketing and front-of-house also need to change.
'That's going to effect the whole organisation,' she says. Liz Neathey recognises how working with young people questions entrenched assumptions. 'They ask, "But why do you do it like this?" That was a really good step back. It makes you think.'
Young people also get much more than a voice from the consultation
process. 'We're actually giving them really useful life skills - to be able to manage a project, meet deadlines, carefully handle objects, talk to people of different ages, write labels. They understand the importance of conservation and the care of collections. They've got these core skills which they can take with them,' says Neathey.
Faith Limbrick says her whole attitude towards galleries has changed now her opinion has been taken into account. 'I like being involved in what the gallery's about,' she says. 'Normally, when you go in an art gallery, you just get to see what the artist's done. But Artforum lets you be included and have a say in it, which is really good.'
Dea Birkett is director of Kids in Museums
www.kidsinmuseums.org.uk
