The Civic Journey: Summary of emerging findings

The Civic Journey is a two-year, youth-led programme, inspiring sustained engagement in social action, community activism and the democratic participation of young people across the UK. The programme builds understanding of the ways in which young people are and become active citizens as they grow up. It focuses on the places and spaces in which they develop knowledge, skills, attitudes, behaviours and experiences – and explores how local, regional, and national policy can better support young people in return. We use the term ‘civic journey’ as this is a process through which young people develop, mature, and change as they transition through different phases of growing up in terms, forming personal relationship(s) with – and participation in – their local communities, the public sphere, and the state.

This document presents emerging findings from the co-created, youth-engaged research process that has been the main focus of the project through its first year. The project, led principally by a team aged 16 to 30, has used three different participatory methods and a nationally representative survey to gain an initial baseline of young peoples’ voice and views against three main research objectives. This summary is indicative of our early findings; it is not exhaustive, or conclusive.