Reflecting on Children, Youth and Leisure

KEYNOTE
speakers include:

Ken Roberts
Professor of Sociology, University of Liverpool

Nigel Thomas
Professor of Childhood and Youth Research and Co-Director of 'The Centre': a research centre focused on children and young people's participation and inclusion

THIS SEMINAR aims to bring together researchers from across the social sciences with an interest in debates on children, youth and leisure.

Within contemporary UK society the importance of leisure for young people's development and wellbeing has been acknowledged. However scrutiny of children and young people's leisure lives is currently at a noticeable high for a number of reasons. Perhaps most prominent of these has been the government and media attention on childhood obesity leading to greater attention on how young people spend their leisure time and whether they engage in physically active leisure.

Conversely, the development of gaming technology, the explosion of the Wii phenomena and the increasing number of social networking sites via the internet such as 'facebook' and 'bebo' has led to a wider range of non-active leisure activities being readily accessible to children and young people within their own homes. Debates persist about the value of these activities for young people and the potential detriment they can bring to wellbeing.

Related to this and a further area of both academic and policy discussions are issues of children's leisure and risk, from 'stranger danger', to the continuing extension and development of child protection legislation which has led to the restriction of children's leisure spaces, particularly unstructured and non adult supervised spaces for leisure away from the home.

Finally with youth unemployment in the UK reaching its highest levels since 1993, the concept of youth and enforced leisure time and deviant leisure are also pertinent within youth and leisure dialogues.

THEMES

Contributors are invited to present papers from a range of perspectives. but key themes include:

* Children, young people and leisure space
* Methodological issues in young people and leisure research
* Children, youth and physically active leisure
* Social exclusion, young people and leisure
* Youth culture and leisure

PROPOSALS

We welcome proposals (max. 300 words) for papers of twenty minutes that address any aspect of children youth and leisure under one or more of the seminar sub-themes.

Please submit proposals to

Dr Ruth Jeanes at rjeanes@uclan.ac.uk

DEADLINE 12th March 2010