Hansard

It is no coincidence that the First Minister chose the Oasis centre in Dumfries as the place to launch Scotland’s year of young people, in November 2017. As Maree Todd rightly highlighted, Dumfries and Galloway Council’s excellent youth services team and the region’s talented young people very much led Scotland in grabbing the opportunities that the year offered, delivering a programme of events not only for young people living in the region but for those living across Scotland.

Those events were led by young people for young people. They began planning for the year 12 months before the launch, with the establishment of a youth steering group supported by youth representatives from 30 local organisations, empowering young people to shape how they wanted the year to unfold. Their vision was to celebrate the personalities, talents and achievements of young people in Dumfries and Galloway and to showcase the best of our region to the rest of Scotland.

The group consulted fellow young people on their plan, gathering views, including from young people in hospital, from those with care experience and from those in our most rural communities, who often feel physically and digitally cut off. In fact, 800 young people in total from across Dumfries and Galloway fed into the plan.

That plan involved seven signature events, including two youth conferences—#ROOTS in Lockerbie and Collabor’18 in Newton Stewart—and the hosting of two national organisations in the region for the first time. The first of those came in April, when the LGBT national gathering organised by LGBT Youth Scotland was held at the Easterbrook hall in Dumfries, bringing together more than 200 young people from across Scotland. Michael McGowan from Dumfries, LGBT Youth Scotland’s international youth representative, said of the event:

“Having grown up in a rural area, I always felt somewhat isolated. But this was a great way of showing every young person in Dumfries and Galloway that we are not alone. I got to meet so many people, hear so many stories, and felt so proud to be able to play a part in making lives better and pushing for a more equal society.”

In June, a second national organisation, the Scottish Youth Parliament, held a national sitting in Stranraer for the first time. On 31 June and 1 July, the region also hosted Youth Beatz, the UK’s largest free youth music festival.

I was fortunate enough to be a councillor on Dumfries and Galloway Council when we voted to set up and fund the very first Youth Beatz event, 11 years ago. I recall getting quite a lot of criticism for that decision at the time, and, for several years, each time we voted to fund the event, people asked why we were running a free concert. If that is all that Youth Beatz was, maybe the critics would have had a point, but Youth Beatz is far more than that. This year, it ran over two days for the first time. One of the centrepieces is “The Toon”, an interactive drama designed and run by more than 50 young people for young people.

This year, I was pleased to watch a preview of “The Toon” along with Richard Leonard, and I know that Maree Todd, the Minister for Children and Young People, also had that privilege. I have to say that it is not for the faint-hearted. Young people act out, in a pretty brutal fashion, real-life experiences about road safety, knife crime, mental health, alcohol, drugs and sexual exploitation. They do that not only at Youth Beatz itself, but at schools across the region, reaching thousands upon thousands of young people. It provides peer advice, support and empathy to those who may well be facing the same challenges and who can see that they are not alone.

Whenever anyone asks me why I voted to fund Youth Beatz for a decade as a councillor and why I continue passionately to support it, I tell them, “Because it saves lives.” We should never shy away from the need to invest in our youth services and mental health services, which is becoming deeply challenging at a time when council budgets are under significant pressure.

After Youth Beatz, the signature events in Dumfries and Galloway kept coming, including a fantastic youth leadership festival in Kirkcudbright that was run jointly by the council’s youth work service and the Duke of Edinburgh’s award scheme. In December, the closing event was the first annual Dumfries and Galloway youth awards ceremony, at which young people were rewarded for their participation, talents and achievements. At that event, Maisie Anderson from Kirkcudbright scooped the top award of young person of the year for her tireless, successful campaign to enable the skin sensor FreeStyle Libre to be made available to those who, like her, live with type 1 diabetes in Dumfries and Galloway—a campaign that she brought to the Parliament’s Public Petitions Committee.

However, what made Dumfries and Galloway’s celebrations for the year of young people successful were not just the big signature events but the many other events and initiatives that took place in communities right across the region—all of which, crucially, were led by young people. I therefore pay tribute to the young people who made the year such a success in the region. They include all the members of the youth steering group, including those I had the privilege of meeting a number of times during the year—chairperson Jordan Todd; the region’s outstanding youth ambassador, Lauren Asher; Sophie Blair; and Emily Davies—all of whom hosted events. They also include Dumfries and Galloway Council’s award-winning youth services team, led by the formidable and too-modest Mark Malloy, supported by excellent youth officers such as Kelly Ross. There was also strong political leadership from the administration, including the council’s first ever youth champion, Councillor Adam Wilson, whose role will be a legacy of the year.

It is on the issue of legacy that I will finish. The chances and experiences provided for our young people last year were fantastic, but one-off opportunities are not enough. In Dumfries and Galloway, the council has pledged that the year’s legacy will include a new young people’s services plan for the region, and it is currently seeking the views of over 10,000 young people who live there to develop that plan. A new Dumfries and Galloway youth council will also be established to ensure more involvement of young people in decision making and to hold other elected representatives to account. A secure future has also been established for Youth Beatz as a two-day event, and the Dumfries and Galloway youth awards will now become an annual event to celebrate the achievements, talents and participation of our young people.

I hope that the Government will match the ambition of the young people and the council in Dumfries and Galloway and that it will deliver a clear legacy plan, supported by investment in young people’s services, to ensure that the year of young people in Scotland is not one year but every year.