Why do human beings behave in the way that they do? Why does their behaviour often seem irrational, reactive, and lacking in explanation? In their role as Youth Workers, practitioners are trained (and more importantly compelled) to manage the day-to-day outworking’s of certain behaviours but in a non-judgemental way without (perhaps) truly understanding why things happen in the way or manner that they do. Knowing how early adverse experiences can influence human development is key to understanding human behaviour. Supported by discoveries in neuroscience, greater familiarity with Aha! moments make it much easier to understand why people behave in the way they do! This 30-minute input will increase your knowledge of those moments and help inform and shape your future practice.

Historically, psychology has focused on fixing problems or resolving issues from the past that enabling individuals to move forward and approach the rest of their life more with more positivity, having put the problem or issue ‘to bed.’ The belief has always been that something happened in the past and it needs to be dealt with. Positive Psychology changes that thinking and urges individuals to concentrate on ‘the positive,’ as the means by which they can move forward rather than being hamstrung by the past. This short input will give an overview and provide evidence of how Positive Psychology works and will offer ideas and thoughts you can adopt and ideas you can adapt to suit your practice.

Who would have thought Covid-19 would have driven the Digital Agenda in the way it has. Twenty-twenty will be etched in the memory of humanity forever, in part because we have the ability to record it in real-time and store it unlike times when the world was previously struck by pandemics. In response, the Youth Work and Training Community has had no option but to adapt, at a much greater pace than previously imagined, and one consequence is that almost all meetings, trainings, seminars, etc have moved on-line. This will no doubt shape delivery and practice in ways to come forever – there is seemingly no going back! This input offers an overview on how delivery has been shaped not only in 2020 but the direction of travel over the last few years and the inevitability of Team Digital in youth work.

We live in radically changing times – among them, automation (which has been steadily replacing the jobs previously performed by people), the growth of on-line technologies and increases in mental health issues including depression, anxiety and stress. This has led to an ‘explosion’ in the promotion of what could be considered as one broad message – you need to be fixed, you need to change, you need to adapt, you need to innovate, you need to be more entrepreneurial to meet the challenge of the future head on. If we are to survive the future, how entrepreneurial do we have to be and more importantly, can there be room for everyone? What are the implications of this approach? There are those that say there can be room for everyone – let’s find out!

Over the last decade or so, the European Youth Work community has seen a vast increase in funding and resources. The last cycle of Erasmus+ saw a commitment of £17bn with 10% of that exclusively for what was known as the Youth Chapter. The budget for the new Erasmus programme has doubled offering unparalleled levels of funding. During the last 10 or more years, various communities of practice have emerged, among them most notably, a community of Trainers. However, running parallel to this has been a growing dependency on Erasmus to subsidise programming and careers as many Trainers have responded to calls to innovate and address identified need.

Covid, has inadvertently shone a light on what in many respects has become a dependency culture, where outside of Erasmus, many practitioners do not look beyond this bubble for alternative forms of funding. Recent research by The Bazaar backs this up. This input aims to demonstrate that there are alternatives to Erasmus, they do exist, are eminently accessible. Even before the emergence of Covid, arguably the non-formal sector needed to develop an approach that takes cognisance of this. Want to find out more about some alternatives and leave better informed about how you can access other opportunities, then this is the space for you.

The need to take care of our planet is paramount. Covid has occupied our minds for 12 months but inadvertently contributed to a reduction in pollution. Equally, that was more by coincidence than by design. Covid has dominated agendas everywhere to the detriment of the Climate Agenda. We need to ensure it does not slip from people’s agendas, and when we emerge from Covid, it will once again take centre stage.

It is estimated that we have 10 years or even less now, a tipping point as it were, to retrieve the situation or irreparable damage will have been visited upon the Earth and the legacy will be left to our children and grandchildren. As a community of practitioners what is our role in this? Do we consider our responsibilities? What about the business of Youth Work? Are we contributing to the disaster that awaits us? In this presentation, you will find out the types of steps that we, humanity, need to take so that we can begin to mind our own business and make sustainable contributions in a very unstable world.

Values that we take for granted in the non-formal sector tend to have a broad consensus. We almost intrinsically know what they are, and the spaces they occupy in our practice. Values change, and they change with people. Values we hold dear and perhaps even close to our hearts seem to have been under increasing pressure in recent times.

Trump’s America, Europe’s failure to address the issue of migrants and refugees coming to its shores, the varying approaches of respective governments to Covid and austerity, domestic policy decisions by Polish and Hungarian governments respectively are just some examples of the deep fault lines in values among individuals, politics, regions, countries, and continents.

In many respects, values are relative, relative to people who live in a particular area or region, for example, the UK and BREXIT. Not everyone supported BREXIT, but the majority of the voting population voted for it, and therefore is arguably relative to the views of people in the UK at a given moment. A question in response might - who are we, the rest of the world to complain, question or dictate what the UK does? But does it mean it is only relative in that moment to those it affects?

What are the challenges of an international youth work community that stretches across an entire continent but don’t always agree on what youth work actually is? How do we reconcile this notion of relative values within a broader values context and uphold these across national boundaries? Do we need to take clear positions and alienate others, or does this then contravene some of our values when we accept and respect the wishes of others? In this session, we will explore questions like these further.

Humanity expects us to be one of several established personality types, and that we should behave in set ways, and that deviation from this should not only be discouraged but is wrong. A narrative exists where we need to have a consistent and fixed identity, that we can’t be multiple identities, that we can only be ying or yang, black or white, and not anything in between or even remotely grey.

As expectations of various behaviours grow, and in a more competitive, demanding, and right or wrong world, we need to be all things to everyone, and behave accordingly in every situation we find ourselves in, how can we manage this? How can we meet such expectations?

This presentation looks at the growth of the idea, i.e., situationism, where there is no fixed personality, there is no consistency, and that behaviour depends on the situation that humans find themselves in, that they will behave in accordance with their needs in a given moment and not necessarily in accordance with our expectations. In this session we will explain how there is no fixed personality.

When we talk or hear about ecology, we tend to think of the planet – rivers, oceans, plants, wildlife, etc. We tend to think about it in the frame of things not human, i.e., things that belong to the planet and we do not really make the connection between these things and, us.

Our role and place in the ecology of the planet is much greater than we can possibly imagine but either we don’t really know, or we don’t really understand this relationship, but it is becoming not only more apparent as we deal with a multitude of issues looking into the future. To be equipped to deal with these challenges we need to better understand how our every action has a consequence, the impact of which can be immense, and in this session, we will increase understanding of how this is - the dots will be joined. It is time to stop procrastinating, it’s time to challenge ourselves – it’s time for Ecological Warfare!