Redirection

From March 2012, all our blog posts will be moved onto our new website, www.boostfelixstowe.org.uk

You can find them by clicking on the ‘More Info’ menu tab and selecting ‘Inspiration’.

There will be regualr updates form Josh as well as posts related to things which inspire us as an organisation.

Thanks

The Teenage Dream

I saw the above text circulating on Facebook this morning in between soppy Valentine’s messages from those in relationships, and bitter statuses about it being commercialised non-sense for those who aren’t.

As a youth worker, I had a few thoughts on this. They probably mean very little, but for what they lack in clarity, I hope they make up for in passion, because I believe the advice given by John Tapene in the above quote is insufficient and will fall onto deaf ears.

The first thing to grasp is that today’s young people have a different mindset which encourages them to believe the exact opposite to what is described at the top of this post. For example,

They honestly believe that their town DOES owe them recreational facilities.

I was at a youth meeting the other day where 15 year olds were asking for advice from town councillors on how they could get a Parkour/free running  park built in the town. At no point did they question the cost, whether it was feasible, or how long it would take. Their understanding was that if their 5 friends were good at it and loved doing it, they should be provided with bespoke facilities in which to practice and to learn.

They honestly believe that their parents DO owe them fun.

Maybe a little extreme here, but there was a young lad who recently murdered both his parents because the allowance money they were giving him to spend on his video game addiction hobby simply wasn’t enough. He saw that they were not fulfilling their duties, and delivered what he thought was an appropriate punishment.

They honestly believe that the world DOES owe them a living.

And so it should. Years at school, years at university (if you can get a place), tens of thousands of pounds later, and the number of unemployed 18-25 year olds is still souring. How good value is a degree in today’s economic climate? The usual route is then for young people to move back in with their parents. It’s free, it’s safe, and it’s comfortable- no need to grow up at all!

As for telling young people to get out of their ‘dream world‘, I have to disagree. Sorry folks, but I think the dream world is here to stay for the time being. So much so, maybe for some teenagers it has even become a reality. In an attempt to squeeze a few more million dollars out of the teenage brand, the leaders in fashion, music, media and film have portrayed the dream that young people can get what they like, when they like, without the need for investing energy, effort, or enthusiasm.

Buy a can of Lynx, and get instant adoration from crowds of females!
Apply for an audition on X-Factor, and you could be the next pop superstar!

And for the total embodiment of today’s instant iCulture…

Buy an Apple iPhone, and you can own something ‘magical’ and ‘revolutionary’!
(which in real terms, just means playing Angry Birds for a few hours each day)

So, no, I don’t think young people will be rushing home to mow the lawn, learn to cook or read a book any time soon- maybe that’s what our parents might have said to us, but for those who have adopted the ‘iCulture’ mindset, the dream that everything exists simply to entertain and please them, and only them, is here to stay, and they are very happy with it remaining like that, right?

Soap

Last week, as part of our town-wide ‘Life Group’ for young people, I introduced the art of soap carving. Yes, it probably was a stupid thing to do the night before one of our funders came to visit our brand new soap-ground-into-the-floor youth centre, but I went ahead nonetheless.

After much cutting and scraping, we had some interesting pieces- some love hearts, an eye, a tree, even a landscaped scene that included the ‘Dove’ logo from the bar of moisturising goodness.

After we’d had a period of admiration at each others sculptures (and a few laughs too), I remarked that actually those sculptures had been in the soap all along.

Think about it.

We didn’t add anything, we didn’t create anything, we merely took away the bits that we didn’t want.

The sculptures were in the soap all along.

Sometimes in life, ‘stuff’ happens. And because we’re trapped in a half-dimension of time, we never know what’s going to happen next. So when we feel like we’ve lost a chunk, or been scratched or scraped, I hope that we can have the patience and the trust to wait a few days, months and years, before looking back and realising that maybe, just maybe, the pain of that removal contributed to the beautiful sculpture which we are today.

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Take a look at Rob Bell’s film ‘Drops like Stars‘ for more soap themed theology behind suffering and pain.

Merry Christmas and a Normal New Year!

I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about being corrected by a young person as we queued up for lunch this afternoon at school.

A small group of them were showing off about what presents they had received over Christmas, some of them more exciting than others. At which point, I remarked ‘but it’s back to normal now, isn’t it, back to school…‘

‘…no.‘

I was stopped in my tracks and didn’t exactly know how to respond. I’m used to people interrupting me, but it’s usually with a story about what their cat did during last nights dinnertime or what happened on ‘Total Wipeout’; not with the single word ‘no.‘

‘Why not?‘ I asked.

‘Josh, it’s not normal, its great! This is a brand new year! It’s 2012!
Didn’t you know that the Olympics are happening this year? It’s gonna be great!‘

So I take my hat off to Mr. Positive Attitude.

In a world that needs a bit of encouragement and hope right now, let’s listen to the young voices saying ‘no’, and putting us adults on the right track. This year will be great.

Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll

Heard ‘We Found Love’ on the radio, Spotify, or iTunes recently? It’s a brilliantly catchy tune, I agree, but the big question everyone is asking, is have you seen the video? For those who haven’t, or who are under 18, it leaves nothing to the imagination. Blatant drug (ab)use, domestic violence, and anti social behaviour all feature in 4 minutes of overly sexualised, high energy, ‘entertainment’. It is for these reasons why posting the real video at the top of this post was really not worth the hassle!

For many who always saw Rihanna as being an artist who pushed boundaries, this video was perhaps a confirmation that she had finally crossed the line. For others, she simply represents a generation of young people who will do anything that makes them ‘feel good’.

You see, we can get all uptight about ‘filth’ like this being all around us every day, and actively seek to stop it, or we can leave it, label it as modern youth culture and continue with our daily routine. Like most things, I would like to suggest that there’s a middle ground.

Let’s not write off one of the world’s biggest superstars immediately. Let’s engage with what she might be trying to communicate. Have a listen to the chorus- it’s a simple repetition of the phrase ‘We found love in a hopeless place‘. More on that in a second.

This summer I was invited onto BBC Radio Suffolk to chat about the work I do with Boost. After the interview, I was asked to share a ‘thought for the day’, an encouragement if you like. It was the week after the riots, and the sense among many people was a disbelief of what had a happened, and a lack of understanding as to how in the 21st century, people in Britain could have such a bizarre sense of what was right and wrong.

So I began to tell the story of a guy called Achan. The book of Joshua in the bible tells us that he was not a particularly popular man. After the Israelites conquered the city of Jericho, they were asked to give all of the city’s wealth to the Lord. Naturally, one man, Achan, disobeyed. Chapter 7 tells us that he stored lots of valuables underneath his family’s tent for personal gain.

His punishment was that he and his entire family should be stoned to death, and the bible tells us that place has been called ‘the Valley of Achor ever since‘ (Joshua 7:26), Achor translating as ‘trouble’ or ‘destruction’. For most people, this is the end of the story. A place labelled as trouble forever more.

Well it is certainly not the end should you come across the book of Hosea, in which God says, ‘There I will give her back her vineyards, and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.‘ (Hosea 2:15).

Rihanna might have crossed the line with the staging and production of her latest hit single, but with lyrics centring around the concept of finding love in a hopeless place, could that song, which so many write off, be any more biblical in it’s message?

I shop, therefore I am?

It’s the largest one of its kind in Europe. It has it’s own postcode. It boasts 7 miles of shop fronts. This is Westfield, London.

However, the last time I visited this fascinating place, I didn’t go to ‘shop’. Instead, I parked in the car park, met someone for coffee, went for a stroll, had a meal, and attended a gig. I was even a bit gutted that had I been there 24 hours earlier, I would have seen Justin Beiber turn on the Christmas lights. Unlucky I guess.

Some have described Westfield as an ‘urban entertainment environment’. Young people are regular visitors after school because its warm, safe, and dry. Tourists are regular visitors and even pay for VIP packages which include hotel rooms and meals. Celebrities are regular visitors because of the guaranteed turnout of screaming fans and the high visibility of impromptu gigs and guest performances.

Westfield symbolises unity through shopping. So much so that a new Westfield at Stratford was one of the first buildings to be completed on the 2012 Olympic site.  It’s brought us together- not just for a few hours, but for a whole day, or more, should you purchase a VIP ‘shop and sleep’ package.

Gardner (2003) challenges us to think about the average teenager. No matter where they grow up in the world, he describes, the chances are, they will eat the same fast food burger, wear the same brand of trainers, and drink the same fizzy drink. Pointing out that he is meaning the McDonald’s Big Mac, Nike trainers,  and Coca-Cola is hardly necessary and merely for the sake of completion. Should we be worried that a generation of humans, no matter what culture, no matter what upbringing, can be defined by a handful of brands?

Taylor (1997:169) exposes this concept well when he writes, ‘postmodern emphases on choice…is a smokescreen to cover the homogenizing forces of global consumerism’. In other words, when we have access to so much choice, why is it that most of us are drawn to the same mobile phone, the same favourite song, and the same brand of coffee house?

Boyle (1998:153) proposes, ‘the market does not concern itself with whether my choice is rational…nor does it concern itself with any purposes I may have…or any consequence of my choice…Indeed, as far as the market is concerned, I exist only in the moment of making a single commercial choice.‘

Shopping seems to go beyond a leisure activity, but has become something that unites us, even something that defines us. The challenge when working with a group of Hollister-clad, iPod-owning young people, is to model an identity not based on commercial choices, but on something much deeper, something much greater, than ourselves.

Joshua Hunt

 

Boyle, N. (1998), Who are we now? Christian humanism and the global market from Hegal to Heaney, T&T Edinburgh: Clark

Gardner, J. (2008), Mend the Gap- Can the Church reconnect the Generations? IL, Nottingham: Intervarsity Press

Taylor, M. “Vodou Resistance/Vodou Hope: Forging a Postmodernism That Liberates,” in,
Batstone, D. And Medienta, E. et al. (1997), Liberation Thelogies, Postmodernity and the Americas, Routledge: New York

Steve Jobs or X Factor?

It’s been a few months now since Steve Jobs, the original Apple genius, passed away. As a Blackberry addict and Windows-loving Google fanatic, even I can’t deny he was an incredible pioneer in the  field of technology. The iPhone 4, whose design lives on in the spec-bumped iPhone4s, was an incredible fusion of science and art which has made it into the hands of millions around the globe. Something I have to admire when my keyboard equipped ‘smart’ phone takes 25 minutes to reboot.

One particular moment of Jobs’ life which is being replayed and reposted across the internet is the speech he gave to graduates at Stanford University. As a recent graduate myself, I appreciate the last minute pep talk that attempts to prove that your degree has any such comparison to the real world, but Jobs’ speech wasn’t like that.

He spoke confidently about how he lived every day as if it were his last, about how we should search for the job and career that is right for us, that gets us excited, and about how we shouldn’t settle for second best. By this point I was noticing numerous correlations with the majority of the conversations I have with young people. Great, I thought. Until a journalist burst my bubble.

This ‘glass half empty’ man began to go through the main points of Steve’s motivational speech with a somewhat different outlook. He began to share how shows like The X Factor have proved that some people shouldn’t follow their dreams- because they suck at them. He began to describe how some people must settle for second best, and how striving to be the best can often destroy your life in the process. Finally, as this article drew to a close, he began to imagine how the world would look if everybody lived every day as if it were their last. ‘The bins would never be taken out’, he cried. There would be a population explosion, he exclaimed. Last but not least, as I questioned the purpose of every conversation I’ve ever had with a teenager, the final blow was delivered. If everyone lived every day as if it were their last, who would pay their council tax?!

This is the tension between the reality of today, and the hope of tomorrow. We each have to chose where we sit on the scale.

Personally, I’m not going to stop telling young people to live their dreams. I’m not going to focus each conversation I have with a teenager on the ability to pay an ever increasing tax. Yes, some people will ‘suck’ at their dreams, but how will you know unless you’ve tried; and if you don’t try, how will you ever know that you’ve lived your life to the full?

Joshua Hunt

Response to Sathnam Sanghera’s ’X Factor shows us Jobs was wrong‘ article in The Times 07/10/11

Hello world!

Welcome to the Boost Blog!

This is a space in which various thoughts, images and links will be posted to further explore and explain our ethos as a youth work charity which aims to work holistically to help young people ‘live life to the full’.