inReach – /ɪn riːtʃ/: Youth Summit

7 October 2023, 10am – 5pm
Room SG1, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge CB3 9DP

Further details and event programme

inReach – /ɪn riːtʃ/

  1. inside the distance to which someone can stretch out their hand.
  2. within the capacity of someone to attain or achieve something
  3. (inversion of ‘outreach’) considers the expertise of those usually closed off from academic and artistic reception.

Convened at CRASSH by Kelly Fagan Robinson (Leverhulme and Isaac Newton Trust ECR Fellow, Department of Social Anthropology & Research Fellow and Postgraduate Tutor at Clare Hall).

The “processes and practices that make someone into a full member of a given political community are at least as important as the end result itself [their status]” (Lazar and Nuijten 2013); enduring educational inequalities mean that England is currently building different kinds of citizens with different levels of presence, status, and voice in the national conversation.

As one Head of Schools recently argued: “We’re living through unprecedented problems in schools but using a lot of the same tools we’ve had for decades, and they’re not fit for purpose.”

This summit will take seriously the Children’s Commissioner’s argument that: “[to see] policy and practice through the eyes of a child puts their needs at the heart of design and delivery, bringing fresh perspective, greater credibility,” renewing the need to focus on listening with young people to help them document and express their lived realities both within and outside schools by centring young people within the conversation. We will welcome artists, academics, educators, community leaders and young people to come together to think across these tensions and aim for productive and practical next steps, whether simply in terms of opening pathways to partnership or in service of longer-term, larger-scale transformations.

For expressions of interest, please contact kr474@cam.ac.uk.