A weekend with my family in London, my ”City of Teenage Crime” was the perfect ending to an intense week of YAM-training. Or as I call it “YAMmin” with future YAM-instructors, coming from all over England to participate. The course took place at The Anna Freud Centre, our local collaborators who are implementing YAM in a large trial across the UK. Anna Freud is a children’s mental health charity with over 60 years’ experience of caring for young minds. The newly built site is located near Kings Cross & St Pancras station in the north part of central London.
This is my second time co-training an Instructor Course. Before arriving in London, I was feeling happy and excited to be “back on the road,” expecting to build on what I learned last time I was out in February. I was also feeling confident with my British English because of the fact that I’d completed my Master of Fine Arts in English as well as lived in London for two years (more than 10 years ago, but still). This could only work in my favour…
In my late teens I lived with my family in London and I went back to that period of time during some of the course sessions that call on participants and trainers alike to problematize our relationship to young people and nostalgia to our own teenage years (“Me as a teen” and ”Teens beyond the box” for those who know). It sparked some warm memories from a city that awakens a lot of hope and liveliness in me. The sixteen-year-old Adriana used to dress up in ridiculously high heels and tons of highlighter and other heavy makeup to get into the fancy nightclubs in the city.
At the age of seventeen I was lucky enough to get a job at Topshop Oxford Circus and during that summer I fell in love with my older boss. He was respectful, but I followed him around the pubs of Convent Garden like a dog with a fake ID hoping to get a kiss. The night ended abruptly when my terrified mother finally got a hold of me on the phone. Not answering my phone, she’d been (taxi)driving around central London all night worrying that something might have happened to me. She had even called the police (!), lucky the CCTV cameras showed nothing out of the ordinary. Embarrassed in front of my older, cooler colleagues I went home in a taxi with a meter running on a three-digit number…
Today I look back at that time with sparks of joy. But also, in slight shame and guilt for my poor mother that had to protect me in a city that never sleeps.
Why am I telling you all of this? Whether it being role playing as a younger version of oneself or thinking of Teens beyond the box, the exercises where we depart from memories of younger years is key to the program. Maybe we’re going back to a period of time when the feeling of “anything is possible” dominated, maybe it was filled with everyday struggle and anxiety about the future, maybe it was all mixed up in a thrill-seeking fortune ride, that we call life. This memory making my younger self just as complex of a being as I am today. By paying respect to a younger version of me I think I decrease the risk of diminishing young people as a group. Instead I relate to them in the same way I would do with anyone else I meet. Identification is key here. Noticing those moments during the course are important to me, because essentially, I’ll learn something new about myself by the end of the week.
Back to the room with future instructors, I’m amazed at how they full heartedly portrayed their inner teenagers and took the opportunity to explore. The group was diverse in all aspects, energetic with many strong characters. Boy did they like to discuss! They dissected every presentation and weren’t afraid of questioning the material. Which in the end was a way for me to dig deeper into the YAM program. They taught me a lot about English culture and language. About the differences between the Swedish and English school systems. And I realized that I have more to practice when it comes to my English.
Post by Adriana Essén, YAM Instructor and Trainer