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Welcome! Alongside my exhibition and co-developing the game: bracket, I have invited peers working across youth arts, social practice and cultural strategy to reflect on the decade of 15–25 and the ethics, tensions and potentials of youth engagement today.

The first column holds text from these conversations.

The second column offers anonymous reflections from youth practitioners on their own experiences of the 15–25 decade, beyond their professional lenses.

All contributors have voluntarily participated and given informed consent. While names have been anonymised, relevant organisational and practice contexts are included to support transparency, frame the conversations and give a sense of each contributor’s positionality within this research.

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outside of your professional lens, reflect on what 15-25 meant to you...

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outside of your professional lens, reflect on what 15-25 meant to you...

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A UK-based socially engaged facilitator and designer working independently across cultural, educational, and community settings. 

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A UK-based socially engaged facilitator and designer working independently across cultural, educational, and community settings. 

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Their freelance practice spans intergenerational collaboration, from children and young people to older adults: often within complex or under-resourced contexts. Rooted in co-design, accessibility, and neurodiversity, their work centres on developing inclusive visual languages and playful tools that reflect the lived experiences of participants. They've worked with organisations such as Somerset House, Royal Academy, Create London and Dyslexia Scotland.

They are also a co-founder of a mobile creative structure designed to platform community-led creativity and imagination in public space, which has collaborated with POoR Collective, Croydon Borough Council, Dulwich Picture Gallery, London Festival of Architecture, London Design Festival, amongst others.

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Reflections:

Messy like no full stop

Raw and unknowing, head first

Not plugged in like today

Becoming

Recession, anchor less, hedonistic, desperate direction.

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Head of Learning and Engagement - Young V&A

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Head of Learning and Engagement - Young V&A

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This contributor brings over 20 years’ experience in museum and gallery learning. They have held senior roles at major cultural institutions including the Design Museum and Young V&A, where they lead learning strategies that centre co-creation, design thinking, and the voices of children and young people. Their work spans national policy consultation, sector development, and the championing of inclusive, creative education.

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An artist–facilitator whose socially engaged practice centres children, family and community collaboration.

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An artist–facilitator whose socially engaged practice centres children, family and community collaboration.

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Working across sculpture, installation, and co-creation, their work explores care, imagination, and material play. Recent projects include artist-led toolkits, child-led environments, and long-form engagement processes developed in partnership with organisations such as Studio Voltaire, Camden Art Centre, TACO! and South London Gallery. They bring an intuitive, responsive approach to collective making and intergenerational learning.

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Head of Public Programme – at an international institution 

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Head of Public Programme – at an international institution 

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Leading public programming for a major international museum currently in development. Their curatorial and strategic work is grounded in a commitment to inclusive engagement, decolonial thinking, and long-term community relationships. She brings over a decade of experience across major UK institutions, where she developed critical and participatory frameworks centring access, care, and co-creation. Her practice spans education, public realm work, and institutional change, and is shaped by a consistent interest in how publics are imagined, invited, and resourced within contemporary art spaces.

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A socially engaged artist and cultural programmer working across sound, installation, performance, and youth co-creation. 

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A socially engaged artist and cultural programmer working across sound, installation, performance, and youth co-creation. 

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Their practice explores identity, sensory politics, and the radical possibilities of narrative sampling and sonic world-building. Deeply rooted in principles of collective agency and access, their work spans commissions and residencies with Gasworks, Brent Biennial, ICA, and Dulwich Picture Gallery, often building participatory frameworks that centre listening, memory, and community voice. They bring a rich history of interdisciplinary programming, including curating festivals and cross-genre collaborations at Southbank Centre and a continuing commitment to DIY ethos, grassroots collaboration, and art as a site of shared authorship and social action.

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My time as a young person was full of challenges that were not my own to avoid. I experienced a lot of racism, bullying and I found ways of channeling that into creativity.

It was what saved me, and it was my family getting me music lessons that allowed me to find these outlets. I would write lyrics in lessons, go to the music room at lunchtime, draw faces and doodle everywhere.

I didn't know that I was an artist or what an artist was. I only knew I wanted to be in a band that got “big”. I never had access to the arts or any programmes or any workshops.

My parents were focused on what they thought was in my best interests and wanted me to get a good degree and a good job. They didn't know or understand a career as an artist was possible, and neither did I.

Art was whether you could draw or not. GCSE, art was not an option for me. So I did what art I could on my own terms, and I guess that's what I always will do.

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Working across creative learning, arts engagement, and cultural strategy, with a consistent focus on children and young people. At Camden Art Centre, they lead artist-led programmes that centre process, experimentation, and the building of creative confidence. Their practice spans public programming, systems change, and socially responsive work, with experience at organisations including Somerset House and University of the Arts London. They bring a long-term, expansive approach to collaboration and cultural engagement.

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Creative Engagement Manager, Arts & Wellbeing, Southbank Centre

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Creative Engagement Manager, Arts & Wellbeing, Southbank Centre

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This contributor works at the intersection of creative learning, socially engaged practice, and cultural strategy. In their current role at Southbank Centre, they lead programmes focused on creative health, youth voice, and inclusive participation. Their practice is grounded in a deep understanding of mental health and chronic health contexts, shaped by over a decade of experience in arts and health, disability-led work, and community-based partnerships. They bring a care-led, trauma-aware lens to programme design and co-creation, informed by their ongoing training in therapeutic practice, which supports a clinically aware approach to working in sensitive contexts. Their career spans both freelance and institutional roles, including at Resonate, Museum of London, and Buzzcut Festival.

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How I was feeling over ages 15-25 years old

15-20

Choices, swimming, anxieties, friends, fun, lots going on, making decisions, feelings of

more responsibili5es, feeling adult, and having to make decisions and feeling like big ones, trying to follow ambitions and intuition, felt like a bubble had burst

Thinking about psychology, health, sport, art

20’s

New city, who am I? Finding out. Meeting new people, new food, new ways of living,

new people who had led very different lives, different accents, feeling like making strong

connections, very stimulated, new experiences, feeling like found my ‘tribe’

Felt like my world was opening up

Playing, giving stuff a go, seeing where it goes

Art school

Exhilaratng, stimulating, fun, feelings of ‘wish I’d been doing this earlier’ more choices, feeling excited and also anxious, whole new world and life, dancing, going out, what things do I want to leave behind and what new things do I want to try, feeling like having to choose and prioiritse, falling in and out of love, new friends, and old friends, new priorities and hobbies

Post art school

Lots of anxieties! Also more newness, missing art school and friends, feel like proper adultng now! Bit overwhelming but also excited about exploring future

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Growing up in a remote, culturally void, conservative area in the midlands the world felt small and claustrophobic. My secondary school had low expectations and opinions of us pupils and the apathy was contagious, mutual. Achievement in school was only understood in academic prowess (embarrassing!), sport (a testosterone heavy, crowded field) and music (gatekept,  expensive, elitist!).

I did my year 10 work experience at what was supposedly a “graphic design agency” but was in reality a Cardboard Box Factory in Coventry. Though I had always drawn and was encouraged to do art at home, the possibility of pursuing any kind of creative career felt impossible. Despite having no innate musical ability to speak of I stumbled upon a creative community through playing in a band at age 17.

While I didn’t recognise it at the time, this sense of connection and collaboration was as important as having a creative outlet. There were as far as I knew no artists from my hometown, but there were a handful of musicians who had gone on to record albums, play tours, move away – at the time this relatively low bar was a profoundly liberating realisation. While the songs may not have aged well the DIY nature, optimism of experimentation and the collective spirit are still highly influential to my outlook and appreciation of broader creativity today.

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Outside of my professional lens this age range is a time of transition, complexity, and beautiful flowering. I think sometimes we fetishise age unhelpfully – I find people fascinating and love learning from people of all ages, but I have to admit, there is something quite magical about making a new connection, learning a new skill and being supported by someone younger than me.

I think with fondness of people that have very impressive careers, but who trusted me when they were in this age bracket, and were generous with their own confidence and knowledge to enter into creative collaborations. We gained from each other.

There is something quite glorious about being young, energetic, unsure, passionate, curious, engaged. Often at this age, on the precipice of self-discovery, when finalising formal education, it’s a period of high stress and pressure that comes from within and from outside.

I remember not quite knowing who/how I was supposed to be. Being thrown into new situations where I had to articulate a self that was still unfurling. That brings joyous invention but also uncertainty, mistakes, embarrassments, awkwardnesses and disappointments. It also brings major milestones – the achievements, possibilities and challenges.

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It seemed to span a long time full of changes and transformation whilst also being quite slow and sedentary.

I often avoid thinking of this time period as it feels awkward and uncomfortable.

A strange growing into and out of identities.

There were moments of being aware of how I should be acting and performing – playing the game of GCSEs and school and moments of not caring at all.

I spent a lot of art school trying to tune out external expectations.