Westhill Youth Platform Mask-oTS
Context/Background
Community Learning and Development staff have supported the Westhill Youth Platform / Mask-ots in Aberdeenshire over a number of years. The group have an interest in supporting health and wellbeing projects and were recently invited to participate in an event, Over 2 Youth 22, aimed at highlighting the impact of poverty and inequality from a youth perspective. The group have personal experience of inequality and two main themes emerged from their discussions ableism and masking.
Some of the group were keen to use creative means to express thoughts and feelings and initially considered journalling. One young person began the process of keeping a journal, but the main limitation was sharing personal accounts with an audience. When staff shared a collective poem produced by other young people in Aberdeenshire about their community, young people were willing to consider it although some had reservations based on their own perceived ability or negative experience of poetry at school.
What happened next?
The young people agreed that they would like to produce two separate poems on their chosen themes. They were supported over two sessions by their regular community workers and a colleague joined to facilitate the poetry workshop over a live Teams online call.
For both poems, young people were given a prompt and sat as a group but worked on their own to come up with individual lines that best represented their experience.
On the theme of Masking:
“Masking is…”
On the theme of “ableism”
“Don’t think that because…”
“We Can…”
“I Can.."
Westhill Youth Platform Poems
Masking is…
Masking is pretending or mimicking behaviours to appear "normal"
Masking is when you hide your true self.
Masking is when you pick up traits from another person to seem "normal"
Masking is hiding from your mind through making another person
Masking is a fake identity
Masking is when somebody puts a fake personality on
because they think it is the normal personality
because of people who told them so
Masking is an exhausting experience
Masking makes me feel sad for people who have masked to appear normal.
Masking makes me feel like I can't be myself in front of others in school and other places
Masking makes me feel abstract and isolated
Masking makes me feel sorry for those who experience it
Masking makes me feel disappointed that people will make people even consider changing their personality
just because they don't think that persons personality is normal
and in truth causing them to think that they are not normal in turn
making them someone that they are not
even though there's nothing wrong with their personality.
Masking makes me feel that I've lost all sense of self
It's not fair how people feel ashamed to be themselves
Don’t think that …
Don't think that because I am
autistic
that I can't cope under pressure,
dyslexic
that I need help with everything,
autistic
that I can't do every basic task,
pragmatic semantic language disordered
that I can't speak at all
because I'm fat
that I'm unhealthy.
We can
be greater than the traps society place us in.
We can
be extremely motivated.
We can
be smart.
We can
swim a lot.
I can
Read
just not as fast as others.
I can
speak pretty well
it's just harder than others find.
Don’t think that because I didn’t like poetry at school
That I can’t write it,
I can.
We can.
I can
Reactions/Responses
As a process, the support of a group whilst at the same time a level of anonymity, elicited rich information and truly personal accounts of experiences pertinent to the young people. Young people were surprised and proud at what they managed to produce in each of the one hour sessions.
Community work staff were:
“blown away, by what the young people have achieved, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up”
“the process was positive for all the young people and I was moved by both pieces of poetry, I loved it as a tool”
Now what?
In late September 2022, young people will share their poem with peers at the Over 2 Youth Event. They have decided the best way to get their message across is to wear one of their favourite poem quotes on a t-shirt at the event, produce mugs, create artwork and read their poem out to an audience.
Following this event, the group will give feedback on the process and share their work with this audience and beyond
"...poetry is often how I get my feelings across anyway, creating a poem on our topic was a good way for me to express those feelings."
"Really fun to do, helped me work with others in the group and help my English skills."
"I already write my own poetry so I really enjoyed making this one. It was very interesting to do."
"It was very fun and i enjoyed seeing all of the groups contributions coming together in a satisfying way"
"...it helped us share our ideas in an easy way."
"It gave a base to actually voice my thoughts instead of being very broad"
