Inside: Our Youth Board Meeting

Want some insider information on how our first Youth Board meeting went? Well, let us set the scene!

We met with our Youth Board Members on December 10th, 2022. The year was coming to a slow close and the snow outside was falling fast. We had an office full of snacks and new notebooks for our members, which sounds great… but… we had to host our meeting online instead because well, let’s face it, a meeting is never worth being snowed in for!

Despite the digital demands of clicking the joining link and riding on a prayer that your internet is going to work; our first introductory meeting went just as beautifully as we’d hoped for. Hosting meetings online can always be daunting when it is around community work. You wonder if people can see you, hear you, do they feel comfortable talking? What system shall we use when we introduce ourselves and how the heck do people get those funky backgrounds on!? But once our board members joined and we saw all their smiling faces, our worries melted away and we were reminded of what is REALLY important, doing all of this together, as a team.

We began our meeting by asking our members what word came to mind when they thought of their journey ahead of them, with the Youth Board. They shared:

Hopeful

Excitement

Future

woohoo

Unqualified

Inspired

Curious

Eager

Wholesome

Proud

We noted that nobody is every underqualified, every one of our members is an expert in their own lived experiences and it is these experiences that enrich their decisions, calls to action and ways they lead this organisation going forward! Plus, our members will learn throughout the Youth Board experience to tap into their power and understand their own legacy that they are creating. We will be doing this through mentorship opportunities, training, personal development plans and much more!  

We then got into the bulk of the meeting, so get comfy and cosy and tune in to the learning ready to unfold:

The history of Comics Youth CIC is a rich one. Full of empathy, love, understanding and a real focus on young people who feel ‘othered’ by society. We started with a travelling case of comics and nerdy items to engage with 100 young people across 6 months. We set up as a CIC to allow us to have a structure to be more flexible and open for young people to be in the lead. Lived experience leaders understand life of marginalised people who are in the same livelihoods.  

For wider learning, when we set up- we were very successful with funding, so we ended up doing multiple projects and programmes at the same time, so from our learning around burn out and marginalised leaders, we now only focus on 3 core projects at a time. Therefore, we are focusing on Graphic Medicine, Marginal and Safe spaces.

There are a few youth board members who have existed in our programmes before which can enable us to garner feedback and reclaim youth voice from the projects we run. Members can have links to our publications to have access to all that we do as well. One of our focuses moving forward is creating more commissioned work and paid opportunities for young people on our programs too.  

We, at Comics Youth, need to ensure we are aligning with funders who fit our ethos as a company and shake up the culture of overworking and third-sector burnout. We are keen to be more youth-led at formal decision-making levels and embedding platforms for change within all that we do. We will work with our funders to get the youth board involved in funding meetings and talks, as well as networking and developments if needed. 

The youth board will act like a body of accountability, and we will answer to the board too. This is from finance to projects and delivery, every aspect of us here at Comics Youth can and will be under scrutiny from our Youth Board members to ensure we are supporting marginalised young people in the most fair and productive way.

We must address the power dynamics that exist on the board, from us as Comics Youth being the perceived ‘leading body’ to different privileges that people hold on the board itself. We will not view privilege as inherently bad, but we must use our privilege for good- like giving others space to talk for example. Here at Comics Youth, we will lead with a clear understanding of how the power dynamic between board, how organisations work and will engage in deep listening, learning, and offering more space for the Youth Board when needed.  

We do not expect our youth board to know how to do this all without any support or guidance, so we have a whole package of support around them! One part of this support is having clear policies in place to ensure there is safety and equity throughout the entire process. Some elements of these policies are:

We will be creating a handbook of support as well as compiling all our Youth Boards work and findings across our website and socials. We believe in the power of our young people, and we hope that the rest of society can begin to listen to them in ways we are continuing to do.

It is vital that young people, especially those who are marginalised, are able to understand the power they hold and opportunities available to them. We hope that by joining our Youth Board, our board members can tap into their power and be closer to making the changes in the world they have always wanted to do.

As we wrapped our meeting up and reflected on the exciting changes we are working towards next year, we opened the floor for some Q+As! Here are some important questions and enlightening answers!

How does meeting 4 times a year work when we are going to be making lots of change? -The way governance works is we will have meetings every quarter to go over the bigger decisions, make timelines of change and recap moves. Life can get very overwhelming, so we do not want to overdo it. There will be opportunities to engage in extra things should you want to, but there is never any pressure to if you just want to stick to the 4 a year.  

Could we have a WhatsApp group chat? It would be useful and helpful to share ideas in-between meeting periods. – We could look at making a Discord server instead to ensure keeping boundaries is made easier, it can be difficult when people see you are ‘online’ on WhatsApp and may create a culture of pressure to be available 24/7. We will make a Google Poll to see what the full board would prefer to maintain ideas and connections throughout the years ahead.

Operational VS Sustainability groups, will we be given information packs about both? Yes! They will be given to everybody, and you can swap the groups if you want to.  

Being online, could we host an online session to talk to each other and have open discussions? Yes! We can do this throughout the year and maybe host that on Discord too.  

Will every meeting have an online option? Yes! Every single one will have face to face and online available where possible.

The new office is in Birkenhead, right? Yes! From the last week of January 2023, we will be there. Directions here: https://comicsyouth.co.uk/find-us and context to the move here: https://comicsyouth.co.uk/comics-youth-news/2022/12/6/we-are-moving