Moving Out of Formal Structures: Young People as Independent Action Researchers (A Manchester Case)

There is a growing recognition that participation in ‘shadow’ structures such as youth councils, forums and parliaments does not meet all of young people’s needs for action and engagement, and a growing emphasis on finding and recognising opportunities for young people to move out of these structures and initiate their own forms of democratic action for change. This chapter, co-written by academics and young researchers recruited from a youth council, tells the story of an action research project set up under the auspices of PARTISPACE which aimed to learn about the dynamics of self-initiated and autonomous youth participation beyond the confines of formalised youth participation structures. In this chapter, the authors explain what we all brought to the project, reflect from different perspectives on the process we went through, the challenges we encountered, the outcomes we achieved, and make sense of what we, collectively and individually, learned from the experience about different processes of participation