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How to run a do politics workshop
If you were asked to do a workshop on politics with young people what would you do? Here are some ideas on how to run a two hour political literacy workshop with young people in an informal education setting. This is a tried and tested structure and works particularly well with young people who may have low literacy.
Issues to consider
Your audience: Its difficult to talk about politics in an unstructured environment such as a youth drop in centre. Try to incorporate your workshop into an existing programme of work such as the Prince's Trust Team programme, or an entry2employment group. The ideal group size is 10-15 young people. Any bigger and it starts getting unwieldy.
- The venue: Is it a young person friendly space? Are seats set up in a circle to encourage discussion? Are there tables available to work on activities in small groups? Is there enough room to get the group moving about?
- Political impartiality: How will you react if participants start asking who you vote for? Ideally you dont want to start interpreting political party policy or start sharing your personal opinions, rather direct young people to where they can find out more about what the parties stand for. See our 20 questions sheet for more advice on tricky questions.
- Support: Make sure you have some support during the session. If you are not familiar with the group and you think they may have some behavioural issues its best to make sure that a youth worker is present during the session.
- Research: Again if you are not familiar with the group, do some research beforehand and find out what areas they live in, who their local representatives are (you could print our photographs); if there are any issues they are particularly interested in and if anyone has any special needs in terms of accessing information.
Structure: The basic idea of this workshop is to take an issues based approach and talk about all the different ways in which politics affects our everyday lives. We have provided a sample outline which you can adapt to your needs. Many of the activities in this outline come from the Democracy Cookbook.
Timeline: You will need around three hours to prepare for this workshop.
Estimated budget: Just transport and people hours.
Useful tools: Sample workshop outline; Democracy Cookbook; Common questions young people ask
How to run a do politics workshop
If you were asked to do a workshop on politics with young people what would you do? Here are some ideas on how to run a two hour political literacy workshop with young people in an informal education setting. This is a tried and tested structure and works particularly well with young people who may have low literacy.
Issues to consider
Your audience: Its difficult to talk about politics in an unstructured environment such as a youth drop in centre. Try to incorporate your workshop into an existing programme of work such as the Prince's Trust Team programme, or an entry2employment group. The ideal group size is 10-15 young people. Any bigger and it starts getting unwieldy.
- The venue: Is it a young person friendly space? Are seats set up in a circle to encourage discussion? Are there tables available to work on activities in small groups? Is there enough room to get the group moving about?
- Political impartiality: How will you react if participants start asking who you vote for? Ideally you dont want to start interpreting political party policy or start sharing your personal opinions, rather direct young people to where they can find out more about what the parties stand for. See our 20 questions sheet for more advice on tricky questions.
- Support: Make sure you have some support during the session. If you are not familiar with the group and you think they may have some behavioural issues its best to make sure that a youth worker is present during the session.
- Research: Again if you are not familiar with the group, do some research beforehand and find out what areas they live in, who their local representatives are (you could print our photographs); if there are any issues they are particularly interested in and if anyone has any special needs in terms of accessing information.
Structure: The basic idea of this workshop is to take an issues based approach and talk about all the different ways in which politics affects our everyday lives. We have provided a sample outline which you can adapt to your needs. Many of the activities in this outline come from the Democracy Cookbook.
Timeline: You will need around three hours to prepare for this workshop.
Estimated budget: Just transport and people hours.
Useful tools: Sample workshop outline; Democracy Cookbook; Common questions young people ask
