The Spirit of Youth
Paul Levy, interviewed here, spent 2005 encouraging Quakers around the country to be more open to the spirituality of young people.
In December 2004, together with friend Simon Best, Paul was awarded £52,000 by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust as part of its Quaker Fellowship scheme. These awards are well regarded in Quaker circles, with only one or two successful applications each year. Applicants must demonstrate passion for their chosen work, which itself must have a practical application.
The catalyst for this particular project was a sense that the spiritual experiences of young people in Quaker circles were often overlooked, misunderstood or even disregarded. At school, both Paul and Simon had experienced mild frustration with their Quaker education (Paul at Sibford and Bootham, Simon at Leighton Park). Quakerism, they felt, provided a good forum for reection and spiritual exploration, but that this opportunity had rarely presented itself to young people in their respective schools. It seemed to them that this was also often the case in the wider Quaker community.
Both had been involved with youth work before, and had found that young people would become excited when presented with an apparent opportunity to talk about belief. Unfortunately the presentation of these opportunities often led to feelings of disappointment and frustration. The young people tended to feel inadequate in adult company, presuming that older people had somehow already matured spiritually. In fact discussion would often be limited by the adults’ feelings of having inadequate knowledge and experience to talk about such things, or by fears of preaching and patronising.
Paul and Simon wanted to encourage a freer and more inclusive dialogue about matters of faith and spirituality. To this end they would spend the next fteen months planning and running workshops up and down the country.
It was to be hard work, requiring a lot of energy and commitment. Two months prior to the start were spent setting up the project, which was to operate out of a makeshift ofce in Paul’s front room. Working so closely together in this way could potentially put enormous strain on their friendship, so measures to avoid this were also planned in.
Although targeted at Quaker organisations, such as local Meetings and the various schools, the workshops were intended for Quakers and non-Quakers alike. Paul and Simon wanted them to be accessible to everyone, but particularly to those who had not been so involved in such things before.
They proved extremely popular, with Paul and Simon running at least two workshops a week for the duration of the project.
However, success depended on the couple’s ability to work with groups, and to adapt and develop their practice as they became more experienced. Group dynamics were key to successful workshops, and a lot of work was put into tackling problems in this area. As the project progressed they learned what to look for in a group, and would often make stipulations before agreeing to run a workshop. They discovered, for example, that the setup of local Meetings and the balance of power within them would make a big difference to the success of the session.
The most fruitful workshops tended to have a strong, already established body of young people as part of the larger group. Where there was little cohesion or communication within the group, or there was no initial common ground, the workshops would be much less successful.
Paul and Simon have learned a lot about working with groups to develop an environment that is conducive to the safe sharing of what are often very personal and deeply held beliefs. Although a condition of their grant was that no book or paper would be written, they hope somehow to make their new knowledge available to the wider community.
Paul Levy attended Sibford between 1988 and 1993