See the badges made by the Oxford Youth Council members: Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, Page 4

The Graffiti project has been visiting lots of different projects which has given us lots of opportunities to try out different things.

For the Oxford Youth Council, we wanted to get at how much some common issues mattered to the people at the workshop, and what they would give priority to, if they had to. To do this, we used a card-matching game.

Matching the images gave people the chance to talk about what issues they thought were important. Some of the issues were provided ....

Each card had facts about the issues on them, which were discussed as the cards were turned over. Whenever two matching issue cards were found, all the people at the workshop put the issue into one of four categories;

• No concern;
• This is a problem I care about;
• this is a problem we should all care about; or
• this is a problem which needs action now.

But the other issues came from the group. These were four issues they felt were important and needed action now.

Though some issues were provided (above), half the issue cards were blank, and it was up to the people at the workshop to pick issues to fill them.

There issues they chose (left) were all important concerns to them, and inspired many of the badges made later.

All of these issues were categorised as problems which need action now. But what made the group think one issue was more important than another?

Young People in Youth Councils are used to debating all sorts of different issues.

The group felt they were more concerned by issues to do with people, than physical surroundings. It wasn't that they weren't concerned with the environment, but perhaps gave more priority to issues like Racism and Crime than litter.

They also gave no special priority to issues that just affect young people. Youth crime was important, but old people frightened in their homes was a pretty serious issue, too.

People photographed their badges to go up onto the web.

We were interested to know if the people were already taking action against the issues they thought needed it. The consensus was that it's hard to take action with really big issues, like racism.

The group talked for a bit about how to take action in their own lives, before finishing up with the positive action of making a badge supporting the important issues they had chosen.