Engaging with Young People About Planning: International Youth Day

For communities working to plan the future development of their area a frequently asked question we receive is how best to engage with young people about planning. After all, this is the next generation who will be living in a space, and it should be designed in such a way that it suits them now and as they get older.

So, what's the best approach?

There isn't one answer to this question, and we'll give you lots of options to explore below.

But we do strongly recommend taking your engagement activity and delivering it in the spaces young people already use and gather. As well as being more likely to be able to attend, young people will feel more comfortable and confident in a familiar environment, and more likely to take part in the project.

Engage meaningfully

Engagement should always be meaningful. When planning your engagement think about the kind of responses that would be useful.

Long or short term engagement?

You can engage with young people in short bursts - through surveys, engagement activties or feedback events, or you can take a longer term co-production relationship, creating a youth panel or committee that meets on a regular basis to talk about the project.

Types of questions

There are three main styles of questions that you can ask:

1. Open-ended questions: these ask what people think and ask them to justify it verbally or in writing. 

2. Closed and scaled questions: these are questions with a limited number of preset options for responses. For example: yes and no, value scales and grids, and ranking preferences between a set number of options.

3. Mark making and creative questions: these ask people to use symbols, drawings, post-its and other methods to annotate maps and plans with their ideas.

For planning projects it can be useful to think about how much your community already knows about planning, and whether any planning principles need to be explained before you start. There's lots of fun and interactive ways to do this.

When finalising your questions, make sure they're clear and easy to respond to in a meaningful way. Test your questions on someone who isn't familiar with the topic before going ahead.

Partner up with local organisations or events

Working with a school is a practical option when engaging with young people, and there can be benefits for the school too - planning often overlaps with topics that are on the national curriculum. For secondary school, college and other older students, ask if you can speak to the head of a relevant department and run a workshop session together.

Primary school students might need shorter sessions with more doing and less explanation - but the principles of the engagement should be the same. Set parameters about the planning puzzle you are trying to solve, and ask them what their approach would be.

For out-of-school opportunities, youth clubs and family or teen-targeted events can be the perfect opportunity to have a stall, table or activity and chat with whoever passes by. Parishes planning their engagement can start by reviewing their planned events calendar and considering if any could accommodate a pop-up local planning consultation stall.

Use interactive events

There's no need to ask young people to write an essay to justify their view, but you will want to capture their thoughts as they develop. What works?

• Focus groups - chat as a group, with someone from your team jotting down notes as young people speak.

• Comment sheets - rather than one long survey split questions into shorter, postcard sized sheets, these are more accessible.

• Use plenty of visuals including maps and photos to explain yourself.

• Use props that can be moved around - stickers, models and interactive mapping apps can allow young people to play with their spatial ideas before settling on their final response.

• Use arts and creativity - invite young people to draw, build or design their perfect park, town or street.

• Temporary creative actions like building a model can still be recorded as responses - take photos of their creations to analyse later.

• Walk and talk - consider recording video or audio as you walk around an area with a group, recording how they feel about landmarks in the area as you go.

• Use online tools - there are lots of digital mapping and survey options that are interactive and fun to use at home or outside of group settings and events. Think about how to incorporate these into your consultation.

• Keep some questions open ended - you might go to an event intending to ask views about X, but after talking to the young people Y is the hot topic - that's great - all information is useful.

• Be curious and don't lead, if you get an unexpected or unusual response, unpick why that person or group feels that way. You might discover a new angle no one else has considered.

• Give opportunities to follow up and report back - let them know how their feedback has changed your plans.

• Have fun! Engaging with planning should be positive, for young people, this might be the first opportunity they have to engage with a planning process.

Should you pay young people to take part?

If your engagement event will be more than a one-off and you want feedback over a longer period of time, consider rewarding young people for their time and expertise. This could be through vouchers, payment, competitions or signing off the time as volunteering hours for the young person. Speak to young people in your area about what would encourage them to take part.

What about older people, or other parts of the community?

Here's the truth - the things that work for young people also work for everybody. Communities engages well with consultation that:

• engages them meaningfully

• is easy to access

• is fun and creative

• asks them to do more than just tick a box or write a response

• reports back on what has changed about the project based on their responses

Would you like help creating an engagement plan for your area? We can help - contact us for more details.