Authoring Our Own Stories

Authoring Our Own Stories has been funded for 5 years by the National Lottery Community Fund. The programme is being led by Partnership for Young London in partnership with Youth Focus North West, Youth Focus South West and Yorkshire and Humber Regional Youth Work Unit.

Please download the full briefing here for more information.

Setting the Context – Our Pilot Project on Regional Identities

Authoring Our Own Stories builds on a pilot delivered in 2019 – 2020 where over 400 young people and 60 youth workers took part in research about how young people’s identities impacts on both access to services and service design and delivery.
This project worked alongside of Dr Tom Loughran from the University of Huddersfield to explore how young people from different social groups and different regions of the UK defined their identities and how we collectively as services reflect and adapt to meet their needs.
Young people conducted research in each region and, using multi-media approaches, explored the ways in which they expressed who they are and how they want to be represented. More information about the work that was completed can be viewed here.

Our Work

Updates

Resources

Programme of work

Introduction

Authoring Our Own Stories is being developed in response to assertions from young people, gathered through our pilot, to work with them as co-producers and provide safe spaces for them to express their multiple identities. This is so that their experiences are more accurately understood by service providers.

Youth led research

Each year we will train 20 paid, part-time, young leaders to co-produce a national, multi-media project in each region over 10 weeks that provides a platform for participants to author their own stories. Participants will explore how they want their identities to be understood by professionals and their peers and capture their findings through a range of media formats including videography, creative writing, graphic art and photography.

Outcomes

The outcomes of their work will provide a rich body of material based on their lived experiences around identity. This will be used to develop resources, training programmes and youth led events, delivered to the youth sector, to upskill the workforce. This initiative will be developed on a rolling programme, over a 5 period, where new regional partnerships are formed each year.

Authoring Our Own Stories will enable young people to take increased roles in defining future provision. Services will develop more effective partnerships to the changing needs of young people, in line with the impact of COVID19. Additionally, the youth sector will have the skills to be able to respond more effectively to the developing needs of young people. This will help mitigate against future systemic inequalities, highlighted through the lived experiences of respondents in our pilot project, and ‘build back better’ as part of the recovery mission, out of the pandemic.

Programme components

There will be 4 components, which will take place over the duration of the programme:

Young Leaders -100 young people trained in co-production, leadership, facilitation, and research skills
Youth Outreach - Delivery of 20 youth voice and youth-led research projects with over 500 young people
Workforce Development - Training and peer support for 600 youth workers
Regional Partnerships - The establishment of 4 cross-sector regional partnerships aiming to drive up outcomes for young people by influencing policy and practice. This builds on the two existing partnerships from the pilot (London and the North West) and extends the programme to Yorkshire and Humber and South West

Ambitions

Develop services post COVID-19

Authoring Our Own Stories is being developed in response to assertions from young people, gathered through our pilot, to work with them as co-producers and provide safe spaces for them to express their multiple identities. This is so that their experiences are more accurately understood by service providers.

Re-frame the future

This initiative will seize the current ‘unprecedented moment’ to recalibrate the culture of the youth sector by becoming more progressive and ‘fit for purpose’. Fundamental to this progress is challenging the constraining methods used to categorise young people and position them within a system that limits their life chances by not fully meeting their needs.

We aim to co-produce this work with young people so that they engage in a democratic process where they share knowledge around the core issues that affect their lives.

Updates

Authoring Our Own Stories 2026: Year Five National

Authoring Our Own Stories 2026 - Year Five

Authoring Our Own Stories 2025 - Year Four National

Authoring Our Own Stories: Year Four - Explores the trope of ‘The Strong Black Woman’ and Resilience, as experienced through the lens of young Black and Brown women

Authoring Our Own Stories: Year Three - Explores Emotional Wellbeing and the Value of Intergenerational Dialogue when understanding Mental Health

Authoring Our Own Stories: Year Two - Explores issues of Community, Connection and Belonging

Authoring Our Own Stories: Year One - Explores issues of Self-Perception and Social Perceptions of Identity

Newsletter

Resources

Young Leaders from Authoring Our Own Stories Deliver Their Training to Support Professionals

On Wednesday 29th April nine members of the Authoring Our Own Stories (AOOS) team co-presented their first training event of the year to members of NSEAD (National Society in Education Art and Design). The themes explored were Identity, Community, Connection and Belonging. The training materials were based on two resources, co-produced by Young Leaders and workers. We began the session by creating a group poem, shared in the chat, about The Things We Carry to shape our identi

BRING YOUR AUNTY – Our London Stakeholders Event, Authoring Our Own Stories

Dance, food and music were all crucial cultural elements woven into the presentation of our research findings at BRING YOUR AUNTY our recent stakeholder event at Guildhall, City of London. Rachel Adjekukor, Anuoluwapo Fadairo, Emmanuella Mamah (aka Ella), Rumaisa Mulji and Emmanuela Kumi all gave compelling evidence from our research project this year as to why we need to unpack the narrative of ‘The Strong Black Woman’ and examine the expectations placed on young Black and B

Authoring Our Own Stories Roundtable 2025

This Wednesday was the fourth Roundtable event for Authoring Our Own Stories , a national youth voice project exploring how young people’s identities strongly influence access to opportunities and support. Young Leaders from Partnership for Young London Youth Focus North West Youth Focus South West and Yorks and Humber Youth Work Units shared outcomes for this year. The session opened with a powerful poem called The Things We Carry , co-created with spoken word artist

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