National Youth Work Week - Conference

Celebrating the people and places where young people grow, belong and thrive. With a focus on play, fun and not always being about targets!
About this Event

The conference will bring together youth and play specialists, academics, and decision-makers for an immersive experience that celebrates and explores the power of play. It will inspire meaningful conversations, encourage new ideas, and leave guests with a renewed appreciation of the importance of play in the lives of children and young people.

Agenda

🕑: 10:00 AM
Welcome and opening from Liverpool John Moores
🕑: 10:15 AM - 10:45 AM
How do we play as adults? Language and play matters!
Host: Eugene Minogue
🕑: 10:45 AM - 11:15 AM
Explore gender roles and inequality in play and sport.
Host: Dr Sally Carr
🕑: 11:30 AM - 12:15 PM
Workshop 1 - Dare to Play: Reclaiming Play as a Tool for Reflection.
Host: Kirsty Burden

Info: Dare to Play: Reclaiming Play as a Tool for Reflection, Learning and Youth Engagement.
This workshop challenges us to reclaim play as more than a childhood activity. Exploring its role from childhood to adulthood, we will examine how play can enrich youth work practice, strengthen engagement, encourage learning, and act as a powerful tool for reflection.

🕑: 11:30 AM - 12:15 PM
Workshop 2 - Writing for publication on play-related matters.
Host: Dr Catherine Wilkinson

Info: Call for Papers - Special Issue: Reclaiming Play: Rethinking Youth Work Practices and Spaces of Playful Engagement

I'm delighted to announce the first special issue of Youth Work: Theory and Practice, exploring the theme of play.

Play is fundamental to youth work practice, yet it is often undertheorised, taken for granted, or sidelined within professional discourse. This special issue invites contributions that examine play in all its forms: as pedagogy, as relationship-building, as a site of power, identity, and meaning-making in the lives of young people. It also considers how play has been displaced in youth work by safeguarding imperatives, risk management, regulatory and compliance frameworks, outcome-driven funding models, measurement cultures, and increasingly structured and intervention-focused approaches to practice, calling youth work practice to reclaim play. As such, it rejects the confinement of play to childhood, foregrounding it as a lifelong practice that continues to

🕑: 12:30 PM - 01:00 PM
Lunch and networking
🕑: 12:30 PM - 01:00 PM
Lunch time conversation regarding Well-Being research 'intervention'.
Host: Matt Moreton and Becky Brown
🕑: 01:00 PM - 01:15 PM
Welcome back, lets hear what young people think!
🕑: 01:15 PM - 01:45 PM
Youth and Play, the importance of the 3rd space.
Host: Dr Tania de St Croix
🕑: 01:45 PM - 02:00 PM
Proving the value of play - how can C Wellby support the conversation?
Host: Ryan Miemczyk

Info: Ryan will explore the social impact of play and support the sector to think about measurement tools to assist in funding and commissioning processes.

🕑: 02:00 PM - 02:45 PM
Panel Discussion
🕑: 02:45 PM - 03:00 PM
LJMU to close the event
Untitled agenda
When did play time - become break time!