Objectives 
  • To make participants aware about the youth cultures 
  • To make the participants aware about the realities of young people from different backgrounds 
  • To make the participants identify the issues of each separate youth cultures  
Duration and Planning
  • What is youth culture: 15 minutes 
  • Breaking down youth cultures : 15 minutes 
  • Problem Identification: 20 minutes 
  • Solution development : 20 minutes 
  • Presentations and Debriefing: 20 minutes 
Materials 
  • Flipchart 
  • Board Marker
  • Coloured Pens
Recommended Method

The facilitator gives an information about the youth cultures by stating that : 

“Youth culture refers to the cultural practice of members of this age group by which they express their identities and demonstrate their sense of belonging to a particular group of young people.” 

Then ask the participants to define the youth cultures in their own countries and ask them to give examples from their own practices which “youth culture” that they involve or they consider themselves. In that sense, they will be able to define the different youth cultures and they will be able to give examples concerning to the youth cultures. 

In the next phase, the facilitator divides the participants into the groups of 5 according to the following youth cultures: 

  • Rural Youth 
  • LGBTIQ+ Youth 
  • University Youth 
  • Urban Youth 
  • NEET Youth 

Breaking down the youth cultures to youth sub-cultures : Then the trainer provides 15 minutes for the participants to identify the issues of the youth cultures, they can breakdown the sub-cultures of the main youth cultures defined above as NEET women, Rural women etc. to specific the issues that they have but they should start first with breaking down the youth cultures from the main defined areas that are relevant to our context.

Problem Identification: After breaking down the youth cultures, the participants work on the identification of the issues that the youth culture groups have, during this phase, the participants should not focus solely one country but the countries involved to see the differences between the issues of the young people from different cultures in the participating countries. 

Solution development: The participants should focus on the issues that are defined by themselves and develop solutions according to the issues that they see important. During this phase, you should tell the participants that we will work on the solutions in the next workshops “Denied Youth Citizenship” in detailed, so that they should think about quasi-solutions without thinking the restrictions as well as the resources or how the solutions can be effective. 

Presentations: Each participating group presents their group and the discussion continues with the feedbacks about the issues from the whole group and development of the solutions. In this process, the facilitator should dive into the discussion to ask questions to participants to increase the efficiency of the solutions and develop new solutions to the ones that are already created. 

Additional Information and Readings

Buchmann, M. (2001). Youth Culture, Sociology of. In Elsevier eBooks (pp. 16660–16664). https://doi.org/10.1016/b0-08-043076-7/02010-6

This educational resource was produced with the financial support of the European Union within Erasmus+ Programme. Its contents are the sole responsibility of the Asociación Socio-Cultural VerdeSur Alcalá and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.