Research study on the needs and motivations of young people
Research study on the needs and motivations of young people
By
Morris Hargreaves McIntyre
A research study that profiles the changing social, emotional, personal and cultural needs of young people by investigating their needs, motivations and attitudes, informing service provision. The findings seek to understand the child’s world through the variety of environments and relationships in which they live – the political systems and policies, how they develop and learn, their demographic, social and economic context, and social, emotional, personal and cultural needs, motivations and attitudes.
The recent successes of certain museums and art galleries in appealing to more people and communicating with new audiences, and the continuing success of many libraries in providing an ever wider range of symbolic materials rest not on extending an old idea to ‘new’ people but in allowing ‘new’ people and the informal meanings and communications to colonise them, the institutions.
Common cultural forms, one way or another, accompany young people into the classroom every day of their lives. For many young people they have a more profound influence on their sense of self, identity and possibility than in the formal curriculum. More important than cynically taking over the contents of ‘popular culture’ would be a principled and thought out adoption of aspects of the processes and practices of the active common culture of the young: informal, democratic forms; symbolic creativity; the recognition and enablement of everyday aesthetics.
