What happens when you hand the pen to teenagers
I'm still catching my breath. Five days at the ABC Heywire Tamar Valley Youth Summit, as an Ambassador and as a Community Partner through Kinda., and I came out the other side tired, full and a little bit changed.
My group, such inspiring future leaders.
Heywire brings young people from across the Tamar Valley together for a week. The idea is simple and a bit brave: give them real room to work out how they could help shape the place they live, then back them to make it happen. Each Ambassador is paired with a small group. Mine was four teenagers, a very big question, and a lot of sticky notes.
The question was this:
How might young people help shape a brighter future for Launceston?
Monday, when the nerves hit
I got there early, ready for the winners to walk in. Then they did, and the room filled with nerves, and it was my job to help make them feel comfortable. Nobody knew each other. Nobody knew what we were making. I'm used to that feeling in a workshop, but it's different when the people in front of you are fourteen, fifteen and sixteen, and they've been chosen to represent where they live.
Our ideas piled up with everything. Second hand clothes, gold coin donations, boat races, gardening, socials. No filter yet. Just a group of young people finding out what they cared about, and slowly working out that they could say it out loud.
They came with stories, too. About basketball, scuba diving, boxing and theatre, about the things that make them who they are. I could have listened to those all week.
The idea that changed
By the time we got into the building stage, the group had landed on a school social with fancy dress sourced from op shops, themed A Brighter Future. I loved it. It had energy, a clear picture, and a real circular economy thread running through it. I helped them shape it, and I genuinely thought that was where we were headed.
Then the conversation shifted. One of them talked about leaving a small school and walking into a college of six hundred people they have never met. Another said they want a trade, but they don't know a single person in that world to ask. You could feel the group lean in. These weren't ideas anymore. They were worries they all shared, and nobody had said them out loud until then.
The op shop formal quietly stepped aside. Connecting kanamaluka stepped in.
I'll be honest. There's a pull, when you've helped build something, to steer it back. To protect the work already done. I felt it. I also knew that if I did, I'd be taking something from them. So I stayed quiet, and I'm so glad I did, because what they built next was better and so much more theirs than anything I would have pointed them toward.
The Ambassadors from Heywire Tamar Valley. L to R: Laura from THEIRS Inc., Claire from Kinda., Noah from Abels Run, Jac from Stompin, Casey from the Beacon Foundation and Logan from the GO Company.
What Connecting kanamaluka is
It's a one day event for Year 9 and 10 students from across the West Tamar, held before they leave high school. In the Tamar Valley, fourteen high schools feed into just two colleges. A lot of students walk into college not knowing anyone, while also working out subjects, transport, and what they want to do with their lives. The students in my group have felt that, or they're about to.
So the day is about connection first. They meet each other. They meet the colleges, the local businesses and the community groups. And the part I love most is that it flips the usual careers day. The colleges and businesses pitch themselves to the students, not the other way around. The young people get to ask the questions.
Learning to tell it
The panel feedback on Tuesday was kind and clear. Lead with your own stories before you pitch the idea. Tell us why this matters to you.
They took it on, completely. By Wednesday, they were writing their own stories and working out how to share them. They made up a skit, about a teenager with a broken arm who rushes into a doctor's room, recognises the doctor, and asks, "Didn't I meet you at Connecting kanamaluka all those years ago?" It's funny, and it makes the point without a single slide. I watched them practise it over and over, laughing, improving it, owning it.
Thursday night
Thursday started with the Ideas Fair at the Tramsheds. Kinda. had a stall with a Small Steps Wall for pledges, seed packets and stickers, all reused from Kinda.forward, which felt right for a week about young people shaping what comes next.
Then it was time for the Ideas Launch. They stood up and delivered what they had rehearsed, telling everyone exactly what Connecting kanamaluka is and how it would work. They had their stories, the skit and each other.
Pitching Connecting kanamaluka - I could not have been more proud!
And then something none of us planned happened. Another team, led by Casey from Beacon Foundation, had built an idea about life skills for young people. It sat almost perfectly alongside ours. Connection first, then life skills once you're there. Two groups, working separately all week, had arrived at ideas that fit together. Nobody engineered it. It happened because both ideas were genuinely theirs.
The two teams are now joining up, and two Community Partners will bring the ideas to life as one event.
What I’m taking with me
I went into the week thinking my job was to hold the space. It was, but it was also to trust. To trust that four teenagers could find their own idea, let go of one they'd grown fond of, and find something truer. To trust that if I got out of the way, something better would show up.
I'm leaving having met new people across the region, a project I get to help deliver, and a much clearer sense of where I still try to hold the pen when I should let go of it. I'm also leaving with a lot of respect for young people, and for how much they already know.
What an amazing experience. Thank you so much Heywire Tamar Valley.
To the four who trusted me with their ideas and their stories: I'm so proud of you. I can’t wait to see where Connecting kanamaluka ends up.
