Tunstall Youth Events
Creative Careers Consultation 2025
In 2025, Urban Wilderness CIC delivered a Creative Careers consultation project in partnership with PICL and Coop Academy Stoke, focused on amplifying youth voice in the future of community events in Tunstall.
The project began with careers talks delivered to Year 9 students as part of the PICL Creative Careers programme. These sessions introduced cultural event production as a possible career pathway and invited students to reflect on their own experiences of arts, culture and public events. Many young people shared that they had limited access to cultural activity locally and wanted more to happen in their town.
From this wider engagement, a small group of self-selected Year 9 students worked with Urban Wilderness to design a youth-led survey. The survey was then completed by the whole Year 9 cohort, gathering honest insights into young people’s aspirations for local events, public spaces and opportunities to get involved. Themes included a desire for welcoming, inclusive events, activity in local parks and town centres, better communication, and opportunities that felt relevant to young people’s lives.
Urban Wilderness and PICL collated and shared this feedback with Tunstall Action Group, led by Naomi Stewart. The consultation ensured that young people’s perspectives were embedded at an early stage as the group developed plans for future community activity in Tunstall. It also opened up opportunities for partnership working between the school and local community organisers.
While the project did not progress into event delivery, it successfully established a model for youth consultation, ensuring that young people’s voices were heard, documented and taken seriously within emerging community structures. The process helped lay foundations for longer-term youth involvement in decision-making and community-led activity in Tunstall.