On 3rd October 2019 we were invited to take part in an event organised by Partnership London bringing together different organisations working in the field of young people’s political engagement. There were two sections to the event. The first section involved organisations presenting work they were currently doing on young people’s engagement. It was really interesting to hear about all the exciting activities and initiatives that were taking place across different organisations. During this stage Dr Tom Loughran presented a summary of some of the core findings from our project including an overview of our survey evidence and some of the issues that have been raised by young people in focus groups. We were particularly interested to discuss our evidence showing how more politically engaged young people perceive voting as a positive opportunity to express their voice whereas the less politically engaged often perceive it as an additional burden or stress during an already difficult period of transition.
During the second part the organisations discussed how we could collaborate in the future and work with Partnership Young London to put young people’s political engagement and political concerns at the heart of the Mayoral election debates. This was an engaging and stimulating process and we’d like to thank Partnership Young London for giving us the opportunity to share our research findings with such a diverse range of organisations.
