“Let's give this 'lost generation' more of a chance” says Graeme Farrow, Chief Creative Officer at Wales Millennium Centre.

A major report issued last week from UK Government spoke of a ‘lost generation’ of young people who are out of work, education, or training in starkly rising numbers.

Its release was timely; at Wales Millennium Centre last weekend, an experiment we started to rail against this trend celebrated its 10th anniversary.

What started as a pop-up radio station in the middle of our foyer for a couple of weeks was a catalyst in reshaping our work with young people.

Radio Platfform is now a fully-fledged radio station run entirely by young people for young people. Over 10 years it has provided accredited training for 700 young people from age 11–25. It has provided payroll jobs and, in most cases, first-time employment in this organisation for 25 young people.

Several of its alumni have gone on to work in broadcasting in Wales and beyond. Molly Palmer began at our studio at The Factory in Porth and is now a rising star on BBC Radio Wales. Earlier this month, Bablu Shikdar made history by becoming the first Welsh presenter on BBC’s Asian Network; another who learned his trade with Radio Platfform.

In these times of rising costs, importantly, everything Platfform does is free.

It’s also simply a safe place to hang out with your peers.

It’s also an example of empowering young people to develop and make things happen on their terms. 

Extending out from Radio Platfform, we invited young people over the years to tell us how we could be most useful to them and we co-designed programmes together, focusing on longer-term, sustained, deeper work with higher impact for smaller numbers initially. Now every year in our work which cuts across screen, theatre, music, visual art, spoken word, design and much more, 4,000 young people participate in our free programmes and 300 young people every year take our free 6 week courses delivered by industry professionals. Across these past 10 years over 70 young people have completed technical apprenticeships with us in association with Cardiff and Vale College.

The work isn’t flashy and it often develops slowly and hopefully with a degree of humility. And we make mistakes. Not intentionally, but we try to learn from young people and adapt to their needs. And their needs change as the world and future prospects change at such a pace.

We haven’t been all that great at talking about this work and we don’t talk about it enough. But we need to, we all need to, because young people are being let down and short-changed. Their attention is also being stolen from them by social media platforms and their agency may soon come under threat from AI.

Platfform participants have been telling us for years about what they experience as a heightening cliff-edge between leaving education and finding a job. There is too much focus in the education systems on gaining exam results and not enough focus on readiness for work.

We support young people to be creative because we believe we have a duty to do so as a national arts centre. This work is founded on the steadfast belief that everyone is creative and has creative potential within them and that having the opportunity to try things out, hang out, learn and find your voice is valuable and enriching in all of life and in any future job. Furthermore, it is important both to sustaining this industry into the future and to building a prosperous and confident Wales.

Young people in Platfform learn by doing and collaborating. They make things they want to make and choose to make. They create plays, hip-hop, poems, exhibitions, films, podcasts. They even have sleepovers here. Their process is one of joyful resistance in a world in which they often feel ignored and un-cared for and it is hopeful. Young people need support to navigate this world we’re in and we need more support at Wales Millennium Centre to offer them the space and time in which they have a good chance to do so. We want to build new, inspiring spaces with young people which foster creativity, belonging and togetherness and provide opportunities to gain skills for work and skills for life.

So the next phase of development, in order to grow our work and impact, is to add to the offer which began with a radio station 10 years ago and create an additional suite of studios run by young people for young people in theatre, digital screen, and music.

We feel strongly that this work is even more vital now than it was 10 years ago.

Many happy returns to the hundreds of brilliant young people who made Radio Platfform and our work with young people at Wales Millennium Centre what is today. If anyone at government wants to take a look at how we do things, the door’s always open.