Full Report

Cultural Practices

Identifying young people is a difficult task given their diversity and changing needs as they age. As a health practitioner discussing the challenges of working with young people said:

it is a moving population, you know, and somebody who’s a young person now isn’t always going to be a young person….Young people grow up…their needs and aspirations change all the time (health practitioner)

With this key point in mind, this section explores symbolic and cultural processes and issues important to the identification of young people. It looks at how young people identify themselves and their communities, what is important to their sense of belonging and how this affects why they want to stay in or leave the Northern Fells. Young people who had parents who have lived in the Northern Fells for most of their lives demonstrated the strongest affiliation with the area.

4.1 Belonging

Many young people who had lived in the Northern Fells for most of their lives and attended their local primary school demonstrated considerable attachment to the area and a sense of belonging to a community. Nearly all recounted a happy and content childhood and this seemed to be important to feelings of attachment to the Northern Fells. Critical to their childhood was a sense of freedom, space to play, fresh air, less traffic than other places and knowing who lived nearby. Many others echoed the following sentiments:

I absolutely loved my childhood here. There's loads of friends, loads of fun and no worries about going out in the night and stuff if you….You're always free to roam the village….Your parents didn't mind, well my parents didn't mind any way. Didn't really tell me when to be back. They were just perfectly happy with me being out (Thomas, 18-24 year group)

I liked it when I was younger because there was a lot of freedom and we have quite a large back yard and stuff so when you're little it's great because you can just go out and do whatever you want and wander off (Dalle, 14-17 age group).

Shared knowledge of particular places facilitated a sense of belonging. Swineside, a local swimming spot, figured in conversations. In Box A a group of 18-24 year old women talk about it.

Knowing things like how to jump into the river and avoid the stone at Swineside helped feelings of belonging. Little things like this mattered and added up to a sense of attachment to a place as young people loaded spots like Swineside with meaning. Other places, like the pub in Caldbeck called Oddfellows, were similarly important in the lives of young people. Oddfellows was important because as well as providing many local young people with part-time work opportunities it was also an important meeting place, supporting networks of friends and their activities. Talking about the pub, Jim said:

‘most people meet up there before, then after doing anything…Like yeah, if there's anything going on like the football and things like that, the training they do at Dalston, they all meet there and come back after and like on Sundays they play football and go there….It's like where everyone meets up. It's just an easy place to meet’(Jim, 18-24 year group).

Taking part in particular activities also helped young people to identify themselves with a place and to feel as though they belonged to a sense of community. Those who took part in such activities tended to be ‘committed stayers’. In the above extract Jim mentioned the local football teams which were important in the lives of men over the age of eighteen. Badminton, cricket, pool, darts and games of rounders during the summer were also highly valued. The Caldbeck Young Farmers Club was particularly important in the lives of young people. Some were core members and regularly attended its meetings and events; others attended particular events having been informed about them through fliers. The annual Christmas party (held on December 10th in 2004) was an event that few young people missed.

Part of the Caldbeck Young Farmers Club’s success was the way in which it meant different things to various young people. For some, especially those who were the grand/sons and grand/daughters of farmers, the connection and success of the club with the ‘more agricultural’ events and activities were important and contributed to a sense of belonging to a successful community of young people. This group of people strongly identified with the agricultural component of the club. For other young people, the club was not just for farmers, but for people who have nothing to do with the industry too as it organised trips to places like LazerQuest. Unlike other activities such as darts, pool and football it was also a club that drew in both men and women as it organised, for example, ‘Body Shop’ evenings, which were especially popular with women. Addressing the needs of young women was important because they could feel detached from a place where many activities were aimed at young men (such as all the sports activities) or were organised for either younger or older age groups:

We’re cut off really you know, you’ve got like brownies and scouts when you’re really young and like there’s playgroups and stuff. There’s a big gap until you’re what forty? You know you can join the WI (Helen, 18-24 age group.)

A sense of belonging to a community was also dependent upon those considered different or outsiders. These others helped to identify a community by not knowing places like Swineside and valuing things and symbols, like rurality, differently. Young people often identified themselves and their sense of community through outsiders who live in cities and towns or have recently moved into the locality. Jill said:

‘we're not townie people, we're more country people. We know how we work in the country' (Jill, 18-24 year group)

Similarly Bob said:

‘Not to sound horrible but it's a completely different attitude living in the city to……I know you walk through the countryside and you bump into someone and you'll say 'Hi! How are you? Hello' to them. They'll say 'It's a nice day' and like start a conversation with you. It doesn't happen in the city. You walk down the street, everyone's like this (pulls a face). I don't like that. I just find it funny’ (Bob, 14-17 age group).

Young people who have moved into the village initially felt like outsiders and alienated from any sense of community as ‘locals’ identified themselves as different to them. Gertrude said:

'When I first moved to the village, because the village is like such a community, it's like outsiders aren't welcome really. It's really big on that and em, but like, after ten years, I think we've finally been accepted’ (Gertrude, 14- 17 year group)

Similarly, Tim said

‘I think people that move here, that come from the outside, I think experience a bit of alienation when they….we did…..because it’s like such a close knit community and it’s people, like tend to grow up here, stay all their lives and their kids grow up here, they’re kind of like, I don’t know, I just found it sort of difficult to settle. …They’re quite tightly knit communities and they tend to stick together against outsiders’ (Tim, 14-17 year group)

Whilst outsiders drew together those young people who strongly associated themselves with a sense of rurality encapsulated by the Northern Fells, they also fragmented young people as a group because of those who considered themselves to be outsiders. Another group of ‘others’ were not only important to the identification of young people but united them as a group. This group were 'old people' and young people tended to disassociate themselves from events, activities and things, like the Northern Fells Community Bus, for example, that were strongly linked with these ‘others’.

4.2 Individuality and independence

Some young people actively disassociated themselves from any sense of belonging to the Northern Fells. Despite contented childhoods, the perceived slow pace of life in the locality, its sense of tradition and lack of change was a frustration for some young people, especially those unable to drive. Helen, temporarily living at home between University and finding a ‘proper’ job, said:

‘I mean that's part of what it is living up here, just tradition. And whether it's, you know families that have lived here for x number of generations, it's just gonna be the same, I think, nothing drastic is gonna happen and the Oddfellows is not gonna turn into a nightclub overnight’ (Helen, 18-24 year group)

Important to many young people and their identification was belonging to a particular music scene, following different fashions and pursuing ambitions and careers that have little to do with the Northern Fells. Young people belonged to communities of other young people that stretched across places through the internet, websites and fan clubs. Whilst they might have deliberately alienated themselves from any sense of belonging in the Northern Fells, they were simultaneously hooked into other subcultures important to their identification.

This meant that many young people wanted to leave the Northern Fells and did. For some, this had nothing to do with being or feeling socially excluded, and everything to do with wanting to explore new places, do different things, meet new people and escape the surveillance of home. Two men who had recently left University explained why they had no plans of returning home for any length of time:

‘I just got bored. You go out and you see the same, no offence to your friends, but you see the same people out every night or whatever and there's not much variation in culture for young people. When you go to Carlisle everybody has to go to the same clubs and pubs and stuff. I found it at times a little bit antagonistic and stuff like that whereas now I live in Birmingham, er, if you like a certain type of music or certain type of atmosphere I mean you can go to a place like that…..I really wanted to get away from home….and not have my Mum saying 'What time are you getting home tonight' and this sort of thing. So I just wanted to cut loose' (Gerald, 18-24 year group)

‘It's a lot easier if you can go and get blind drunk and you know, you just call a taxi and you get home. Whereas (at home) you have to try and face your parents and act sober and it's just, it's a lot easier. I mean the reality of em, just, the suitability of city life. Not really suitability, but ease of it, you know, for transport, you don't have to worry about getting to places’ (Jeff, 18-24 year group)