Young Londoners Research Programme

Partnership for Young London, Rocket Science and Young Harrow Foundation have been funded by the Mayor of London to deliver a Young Londoners Research Programme (YLRP). The YLRP is a programme facilitating peer research projects with training and support for groups of young people to design their own research projects, conduct fieldwork, and analyse their findings.

Over the course of 12 months, 9 groups of young Londoners have designed and executed their research into barriers and/or opportunities for accessing youth services and presented their key findings and recommendations at the "Voices of the Future" event on June 2nd, 2023.

Voices of the Future was held at City Hall, presenting their research outcomes to policy makers, funders and decision-makers in order to further influence policy and practice.

Read the full report of the YLRP and 9 case studies here.

Watch the video created by YouMeUs.TV capturing the YLRP as a whole:

Programme of work

A New Deal for Young People

The London Recovery Board, which is co-chaired by the Mayor of London and the Chair of London Councils, is committed to developing a ‘new deal’ for this generation of young people. The mission is that by 2024, all young people in need will be entitled to a personal mentor and all young Londoners will have access to quality local youth activities. More about the New Deal for Young People can be viewed here.

Young Londoners Research Programme

As part of the work underway for the New Deal for Young People, the Mayor of London commissioned a new programme that funds and supports young people, their youth or support workers and their youth organisations to research young people’s views on the following:

Access to youth services
Barriers to attending youth services
Young people’s specific needs and the type of activities young people want

Using peer research as a method, the findings and evaluations of the pilot projects are shared with policy makers working on the New Deal for Young People and more broadly, with the aim of shaping what youth provision is funded and how it is promoted to young people in need of support.

Approach

We have delivered a grant-giving, training and support programme that enables small groups of young people (a minimum of two young researchers), supported by a youth worker and youth organisation. Young people's involvement and participation has been essential throughout the design and selection of the grants as well as an essential requirement in the application process. Once the grants were established, the programme provided training and support, guidance and tools young people needed to carry out youth-led peer research projects.

Youth-Led Research

Young people taking part in this work as young researchers are:

Young people living in London aged 14-25
from a diverse range of backgrounds and lived experiences

The programme aimed to support the young researchers to take action within their community, for example by:

identifying young people in need that could benefit from youth activities and are not currently accessing them
researching how these young people can best be supported to engage with youth activities, and what kind of activities they are interested in
trying out activities that engage young people who are not accessing mentoring, personalised support or other youth activities
reflecting and analysing how effective the approach was and how it could be adapted or developed
making recommendations about future approaches and activities that could be used

Journey

Groups

There were 9 groups of young researchers with supporting organisations who have been funded (please see the section below for the individual research projects):

The journey so far

Applications for project funding were submitted and were assessed by young people and Partnership for Young London
Partnership for Young London visited all nine funded groups at their sites
All groups have done three days plus online sessions of training on:
- Deciding on the research area and the research question
- Agreeing, developing and practising the methods for the research
- Basic research ethics and safeguarding
- Identifying why this research, who to influence and how
Collaborate on background research for projects
One to one check-ins on the status of the project between funded groups and Partnership for Young London
Present research projects at launch event at City Hall in August 2022
Shape research areas with relevant stakeholders
All done training in analysing and interpreting the collected data
All 9 projects finishing fieldwork stage; consisting of carrying out focus groups, interviews, workshops, and surveys.
Training days and online check ins consisting of:
- Data preparation, analysing findings, processing findings
- Writing recommendations, report writing, campaign and influence
June 2023, end of the research projects, presenting back to stakeholders

The journey forward

Stakeholder engagement and groups taking their research forward
Findings influencing the New Deal for Young People and wider policy and practice for young Londoners
Dissemination of report and peer research as a method

Supporting Resources

Please see supporting resources in the section below