During our seminar group work, it was very important for us as a team to understand the motivations of the organisers in establishing the activities and creating open spaces for youth. Through our fieldwork with the organisers Burn and Quindo, a number of common motivations were revealed. They are the fulfilment of the organiser’s self-value; the desire to contribute to social inclusion, which is understood by the organisers to mean making young people feel accepted by the group and feel part of wider society; the need to have freedom while at work; and the satisfaction of positive responses received from participants.
Motivated by an opportunity for self-fulfilment
In general, the vast majority of the interviews from our fieldwork with Burn and Quindo show that people working there are motivated and pushed into the social field due to their own high beliefs in society and the importance of social values to strengthen the social fabric of society. Solidarity, contribution to society and a willingness to help are key values in shaping the common identity of the organisers. Through their own work, they seize the opportunity to practice these values and do not only think of them from a theoretical perspective. Freedom, help and creativity were repeatedly mentioned throughout the interviews that we conducted during our fieldwork as motivating factors for the organisers.
Alexander, the coordinator at Quindo, considers his motivation to be based in a desire to help less privileged youth in Kortrijk by giving free workshops, as well as the personal and professional fulfilment he feels through his work with the community. While in Broos’ case, he is fulfilling himself by doing community work and creating activities. He enjoys seeing the results of his work on the ground, by bridging the gap between youth from very different backgrounds and constantly reaching more people, he feels that the success of his work also mirrors his values. In the case of the organisers of Burn, the context is the same in the sense that people feel closely attached to these kinds of values and seize the opportunity to put them into practice through their work. Jeroen, the trainer for the breakdance group at Burn, derives his motivation from his personal beliefs and believes in the notion of recognising "diversity is a reality”, and the importance of the humanitarian values within society. He aims to promote an open space for youth free from bureaucratic limitations, he promotes open spaces accessible to everyone, irrespective of one’s background or race and he believes that one should not think in terms of different and separated groups, but as one united entity.
The same view is shared by Laura, the teacher of hip hop class in Burn. She likes to encourage other people to contribute to youth society and believes in the importance of sharing positive energy. Because of this, Laura motivates her group in a way that makes them loyal to the group, strengthening the network among the group members and eventually creating a collective identity, which strengthens group coherence. Jasper, the other organiser at Burn, shares similar viewpoints with his colleagues in terms of being highly attached to humanitarian values. He is motivated to empower youth and to practice his ideas and to see how they work out. He also believes in the importance of involving children who were not really targeted by the main cultural centres and youth workers in the area, through an open house for everybody who is interested. He also finds personal fulfilment by implementing his new ideas for activities.
Motivated by the chance to contribute to social inclusion
Promoting ‘social inclusion’ is one of the key motivations for organisers at Burn and Quindo to continue their work. Through our interviews and conversations with organisers, we realised that the majority first joined these organisations with very different reasons. Alexander for example was attracted by Quindo mainly because his background was in systematic musicology and the job was the perfect combination of music and radio, which linked to his study. Broos, on the other hand, studied social work and wanted to do something other than sitting at a desk. Then there is Jasper from Burn who liked the idea of certain leisure activities like slam poetry and rap and he loved the idea of giving voice to youth who did not have it. It is interesting therefore that after having worked in the organisations for a while, the key motivation keeping all of the organisers coming back to work became more homogenous in that all organisers came to greatly value the social inclusion aspect of their work. At Quindo, they try to include vulnerable children by working with the Public Welfare Centre (OCMW) to actively reach out to these kids and involve them in their programmes. The reason they do this is because they think the media training and developing media skills can help to develop social skills. According to the organisers this brings great benefits for vulnerable youth such as increasing their employment opportunities, being more mature, and being more responsible with their own life. Furthermore, the organisers at Quindo strive to take away the separation between people who come from social programmes and the ones from regular programmes by giving them the same type of training. They try to encourage people to come to media lab by keeping it as low level as possible.
“We give chances to everybody. When you are disabled in some kind of way you just can come here, there is no problem. If you have experience or not. When you hate radio, like radio. But you have to be very flexible when you are with us […] And that is very nice, that we can work with everybody. That in events you see that middle-class people that follow drama lessons, I am one of them I’ve followed drama lessons, who don’t have big bags of money but have enough and then you see people who have a bad situation at home and someone who is disabled and doesn’t have a lot of friends, and it is nice to see all of them interacting. We have someone who does national radio but is a bit autistic and it is nice to see him together with someone that has a lot of energy. I think that when you do something at Quindo it is your thing I think that it is important.” – Thomas, Quindo
Thomas believes it is really important that at Quindo they include everyone no matter a person’s status. As he points out, they symbolise this open policy by keeping their door physically open to welcome people. At Burn, the aspect of the organisation’s philosophy that promotes the involvement of youth from different backgrounds in Leuven is also expressed by making it accessible to as many people as possible. The workshops are provided for free and participants do not need to subscribe or give personal details. At Burn, they try to encourage agency among their participants by giving them the freedom to learn what they want. They do not look for young talent to train them and gain easy success but create a place where all those with shared interests can come together and get to know each other. More than anything else it is this ‘social inclusion’ characteristic of the organisations that keep the organisers going back. This sentiment can be summarised by Laura who said , “I don’t do it for the money really, because I also have a student job and that’s where I get the money. I do it for the kids and the whole idea of involving people. The social part”. For her, she wanted to make friends and develop “community building through teaching each other dance”.
Motivated by the freedom that comes from this kind of organisation
Another motivation keeping the organisers dedicated to their work is the professional freedom that they find at the organisations. Jasper at Burn shared for example that he likes the “infinite possibilities [sic]” of his job, which means he has freedom to be creative and try out a lot of his own ideas. Some ideas may work well, some may not be so successful, but then they will work on the ones are not working to find a way to improve them. Back in 2012, Quindo was just a pilot programme in the city of Kortrijk, however after seeing that the idea of running a media lab for youth worked, it became a non-profit organisation and entered a collaboration agreement with the city. Due to this status, the organisation now has to fulfill a number of deliverables and submit an annual report to sponsors such as OCMW, the city of Kortrijk, and the province of West Flanders. Even with targets to achieve however, Alexander says they still “have some leeway”, and have freedom to implement programmes their own way. Broos also shares the same feeling that what attracts him to keep working at Quindo is that he has the complete freedom to do things in his own way. Quindo also create the freedom for youth to come up with an idea and foster it. They have, for example, a programme called Quindo Perfect Match which provides an opportunity for young people to think about creative ideas and turn them into reality. One example given by Alexander is of a participant who had an idea, got some funding and then came to Quindo to learn how to vlog. Once at Quindo, they formalised it and linked it to an educational programme through which people could learn about how to make the vlog interesting and how to develop a communication strategy around it. In the same way that freedom in their work attracts the organisers therefore, it seems that this sense of freedom also encourages young people to come and express themselves.
Reciprocity
While, on the one hand, working with youth can often throw up certain challenges, on the other hand, our field work demonstrated that it can also provide an opportunity for the adult organisers to get some new ideas and develop a more creative way of thinking, whilst also helping them to recover their energy and motivation. During our interactions with the organisers, one common idea coming out amongst them all was that working with the younger generation keeps them feeling young and regenerated, in addition to this we noticed that they felt that working with youth keeps them up to date on multiple current issues and emerging challenges.
The positive reactions the adults experience with the youth can lead to creativity and unique initiatives, as well as positive energy that continues to grow. Laura highlights that she is fascinated by working with youth, because they provide her with positive energy as feedback for her efforts to teach as well as for her contribution in establishing the open dance class. A similar story can be seen in the case of Broos. He described his motivation as stemming from the energy that he gains from the results he sees working on the ground with youth. He explained his joy seeing barriers being removed amongst youth from different communities, and through these positive results, he becomes more motivated to work to reach his goal. For Broos, the enjoyment that arises from working with youth cannot be reachable without working in the field. This type of enjoyment is a unique combination consisting of the happiness of others being developed through these activities and seeing the shaping of the future through youth participation. It is about the small things they get back from the participants. Alexander, for instance is happy that some kids trust him enough to ask him for help when they have problems, as they do not often share these thoughts with anyone else. Building people’s trust and sharing is what makes him feel proud and he considers it to be a small victory.
In general, the common element that could be found between the organisers is the loyalty and commitment to humanitarian values and their own beliefs in the importance of strengthening the bridges between cultures and communities. They share the vision of including a social aspect in their work which gives young people a chance to participate in the activities regardless of their different background or social statuses. They like to have freedom to implement creative programmes, and they feel happy when they the participants are empowered to work on new ideas. These motivations drive the organisers to keep their organisations laagdrempelig.