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Back to newsSo we’re back in the flow after the summer break and a new academic year is well underway! What does this mean for Team Research here at Youthscape?
Well, we’ve been joined by the magnificent Martin Saunders who has already made his mark on the Centre, leading us in a creative vision/innovation day yesterday in true Saunders style. The professionalism and skill he displayed was nothing short of inspiring (we have to say nice things about him now he’s our boss!) and he managed to draw out from the deep recesses of our minds the best that Team Research has to offer…..more on that later!
The next few months are pretty jam packed as we’re working on 5 different research projects, some speaking events and conferences and hopefully will get more time out to develop our next big research idea. We thought we would give you a rundown of what we going to be getting up to, so here’s a whistlestop tour of some of the expected highlights of our next 6 months!
We will be continuing to work on the Translating God project, updating Trend charts as new data is released and beginning the evaluation of the effectiveness of an open reading resource with youth groups all across the country. We’re also continuing with our research into the impact of The Alban Way, a spiritual formation programme for children and young adults and will keep on supporting the Church Development Team within Youthscape to evaluate their Launchpad and Youthscape Essentials Programmes.
More recently we started to work with a Scottish organisation called Kythe to help them design and conduct research to help inform the development of a new youth worshipping community in their area. And we’re embarking on a project with the Diocese in Europe to map their existing youth and children’s ministry and co-create research with young adults to learn more about the experiences and needs of young people within the diocese through listening.
In between all of that we’re speaking at the Frontier Youth Trust Beyond 2024 Conference, leading a lecture in participatory research at the University of Bedfordshire, speaking at the Churches Together Mission 2024 conference and at an event on Youth Radicalisation and The Church. Then we're organising our own Research Community to bring together academics and youth workers with an interest in faith-based youth work research and holding a launch event in January.
Not to forget helping the events team deliver the incredible National Youth Ministry Weekend in November! (It’s not too late to book if you still need tickets!)
And last but not least a new edition of The Story is due out in November and research published today about young people’s problematic social media use is a timely teaser of this edition’s theme….
So we’re going to be pretty busy but I’m sure we’ll find time amongst all of that activity to develop the product we came up with during a creative activity led by Martin in our vision day. After all, who wouldn’t want a solar powered, luminous yellow, sugar coated air fryer that takes 8 hours to charge, forever to cook and plays the full version of Crazy Frog with flashing lights before it releases your cooked food. We thought so, better get to it!
