Ruth Ibegbuna on working with youth to bridge divides between UK communities

Ruth Ibegbuna is the founder of the RECLAIM project, Roots Programme, and Rekindle School, where she works directly with young people to build a fairer future in the UK. The Democracy and Belonging Forum’s Evan Yoshimoto met with Ruth to discuss her more recent projects, the Roots Programme and ReKindle School, and how they are advancing belonging among working class youth.

Ruth, I want to start off by asking you some questions on the Roots Programme, which I see as a bridging project. You have said you are attempting to counter the lack of understanding among those from different backgrounds in the UK by supporting instances of radical connection. What does radical connection mean to you and how is it being fostered through this initiative?

Here in the UK, the ways that we interact with each other can be quite formal and we sometimes struggle to meet people outside of our own bubbles. People are really firmly entrenched with those that they know and trust. These people often think like them, look like them, and sound like them. After Brexit, all sorts of people have come to the realization that this is a country where people feel virulently differently to how they feel. There was so much confusion and anger because people didn’t realise that their neighbors felt differently to them. So I suppose this radical connection of Roots is ‘forcing’ these people to interact with one another and learn a different way.

We are not fostering friendships. We are supporting unlikely interactions, which is different. We're asking people to bravely enter a new space, possibly display some vulnerability, and be prepared to connect to someone that they might not immediately identify with. At first they may not see why they are with this person, but through the weeks they begin to shed layers and understand that all of humanity has things in common. And so, this radical connection is about asking British people to step through their very thick, very learned, layers of discomfort and to be prepared to show their authentic selves to a stranger and to develop from that interaction. It's about raising compassion. But before you can have compassion, you have to have curiosity. 

The thing I've learned is that so little of our curiosity goes to people who are different from ourselves. We inhabit a tiny island in the UK and we're so diverse in our thinking, expectations, hopes, and fears. How has that happened? We want our participants to ask each other, “What have been your drivers of change in your life?” And we'll try to pique that interest outside of their own silos.

Why did you create this project?  

My personal profile is an important element. My father came here from Nigeria as an immigrant to the UK;  my family was relentlessly curious about different cultures and peoples’ way of life. We traveled all the time. We were that incongruous Black family holidaying in the Scottish Highlands or in the Valleys of Wales. We wanted to learn how different communities lived. I was the only Black child at my semi-rural primary school, because my parents had the strong belief that I should be able to go into any space and feel that I am entitled to be there. So my life has always been quite a curious one in some ways. I've always been close to other cultures, learning from them, and befriending those with entirely different lives. I just thought that is how life was for most people. And then, as I got older, I began to recognize, oh wow, that's not how life is at all. 

Brexit happened and I became very aware that those in my professional life, which is far more middle-class, voted one way and the people I lived among, which was a white working class area, voted another way. Brexit morning happened and where I lived people were dancing in the street. Literally. I saw my neighbor dancing down the street, shouting ‘Happy Independence Day!’. And there was so much jubilation and sense of genuine achievement and pride in this very working class community. Then my Greek friend (based in the UK called) and she was distraught and we asked ourselves over and over again how this could have happened.  I became increasingly aware of the absolute schism between these two different groups. They just didn't know each other and were fairly disgusted by each other’s views.

All of a sudden, there's this huge political choice made, that impacts us all. The people were at war with each other and our country’s leadership was completely unable to bring us back together.  UK political leaders primarily have come through a very particular and privileged education system, which does not focus on developing emotional intelligence. It's not necessarily about academic achievement either. It's all about winning, dominating, and smashing competitors into the ground. They couldn't bring us back together because they didn't have the skill to do that, it was genuinely beyond them. And that's when I became really interested in this idea of communicative compassion, because our country was in a state of fracture and pain and no one was discussing healing. No one was talking about unity. No one was saying you are my brother, you are my sister, you are my colleague, you are my friends and we need to find a way through this together.

That's why Roots is giving people a safe space to come forward with their views and know that they are not going to be silenced. They might not agree with one another, but they will be seen and heard authentically. They are going to be respectful in the way they come back to one another. You're allowed to speak. You're allowed to talk about immigration as long as you don't say anything hurtful or racist, because you might have legitimate concerns. Let us hear them. And then when we've heard them, we can discuss and decide together if those views hold merit.

And what is the benefit to bringing together young people from different educational backgrounds (comprehensive schools and independent schools) in the UK?

I was a teacher for seven years. I attended state schools and I predominantly taught in state schools, but I spent one year working in a very exclusive private boarding school. It was there I saw the difference in what educational diet was being served up to different young people across the UK. Their curriculum was different. The teaching was different. The expectations of the children were different. These children at the private school were being taught to network and how to address people and to feel that everything they said was valid, that their thoughts counted—that they counted.

As UK society stands without some sort of revolution, these students who are at these very privileged institutions are going to go on and run the whole show. At this moment they're running the world without any facilitated exposure to those young people who live completely different lives to them. Those who have profound challenges, who struggle due to poverty, and expected to live their lives in the shadows, with very little agency or respect. These leaders are expected to make the decisions on behalf of people of whom they know absolutely nothing. 

Roots is also about how we can understand those children at elite private schools, understand their challenges, the pressure many are under and have compassion for them. But we need for soon-to-be-powerful young people to recognize that other 13-year olds who might live on social housing estates or might be the children of drug dealers are also valid and they need to be heard. And sometimes it's time for rich students to close their mouths, demonstrate humility and just listen. Roots has been about challenging all young people to use their voice, and making sure they've got equal space in that room to challenge each other, to listen to each other, to be intrigued about each other, especially for the young people who aren't often in those rarefied spaces to ask the questions they need.

How are the youth finding these gatherings? Are there any stories of successful or challenging instances that you would like to share?

They like them. Young people are more curious than adults. They are also more honest. There was a moment that I saw where one of the young people from a top public school said he wanted to be an investment banker because he wanted to make a lot of money. And one of the young people from the Scottish Highlands said, oh, I don't fancy that, that sounds like a lonely existence. I want to do something where I'm interacting and helping people. And the youth who wanted to be an investment banker was shocked because you can tell he never had that feedback. It was a beautiful moment. He learned that this incredible job that he wants in other people's eyes isn't incredible for everyone. The other young person was questioning why they wouldn’t want to be helping people, why they wouldn’t want to be connected to people on the ground? Why do they want to make so much money? These are the moments that are really revealing and often unintentionally beautiful.

You have also been working on co-creating the Rekindle School with a group of young people with the goal to embrace those who feel disenfranchised by the educational system and encourage them to fall in love with education.  You’ve called it “the school you wish you'd attended.” What do you mean by this?

It was one of the young people that came up with that as a tagline, but it works for me too. I sit on a board with eight young people, and they are not the young people that you would necessarily expect to be the Trustees of a school. These are talented young people from working class communities. Some of them are young people who have had a difficult time in their schooling. We’ve got young people who've been in the social care system, who are on the autisitic spectrum, who have been bullied. And because all of us love learning, but not necessarily formal education and formal schooling - the act of learning;  we all started having conversations about what could have been better for us and what we would have been transformational in our education.

I was telling them about being the only Black kid in my school and how my parents had to fight for our culture to be something that was recognized and respected in the school. And then other young people were talking about critical thinking and how, because they came from the poorest communities, they felt like school was just to get them through the exams, while not expecting them to think critically, to be ambitious, to soar. They were taught to believe that no one really cares what their views on morality and philosophy are. So when we all started talking about what we once needed, we came up with the idea of a supplementary school. Rekindle will focus on life skills and confidence you need, but you never learned in your regular school.

What role have these young people had with Rekindle School? And what role are you playing? Why is this co-constitutive element important for belonging within the school?

This is the school I've been wanting to run since I was about seven years old. And then when I put the idea to young people and they were just as passionate as I was, I realized that the missing ingredient was letting these young people lead it. I'm 45 now, and I'm a long way from a 13 year olds experience. When I give my ideas to the young people, they just turn them into something so much more powerful. They have a unique understanding of what a teenager is going through right now and what is going on in society. 

Everything we have put in front of the young people has been served back to us in a more powerful and profound way. We had a 17-year old writing our safeguarding policies. She spoke to other young people and said, what does safeguarding look and feel like to you? So rather than it coming from a social worker or from a teacher, it's coming from a young person and it's completely different, but it's so much more safe and thorough because of it. When are you a person in crisis, who do you tell? Students typically don't tell a teacher, they tell their friends. So the people that need to have the safeguarding training are actually other young people. You know, simple as hell, right? When we actually dig deep into the perspectives and talents of young people and what is in their comfort zones, we can co-create the school of our dreams.

Talk to us about the SNAP framework (Support, Nourish, Achieve, and Protect) and the Rekindle School. I read that Rekindle has forged links with local restaurants and chefs who will give students the opportunity to learn practical cooking skills and about the wider implications of diet. What is the connection between nutrition, cognitive function and educational outcomes to provide a holistic sense of belonging? 

The first thing we agreed on when we talked about our school was that we're going to feed the children. When children are hungry, they have a harder time focusing. They're less interested. They become irritable. They are excluded from lessons. They are going home to a meal, but it's often not a nutritious meal. Learning is not going to happen if their bellies are rumbling and simultaneously teachers are talking about Shakespeare. It is extremely difficult. The idea of being able to feed children properly is extremely important to succeeding in the classroom. We said, if we can't feed our children, there is no school. Now we've got a number of restaurants who are going to be working through a charity who committed to feeding all the children a hot nutritious meal every night for a whole year free. Absolutely free.

The shared Rekindle evening meal is going to be ‘phones off’ with adults and children eating together, having conversations. Meal time is not just the food, it’s the interactions that go on between the adults and children across the table. Education comes after that. The first step of educating a child is making sure that their spirit is full. And you can't do that with an empty stomach.

What do you see as the main barriers to belonging in the UK? And conversely, what are some of the main sources or practices of hope and visionary work that you're seeing in the UK or Europe right now?

Brilliant question. This feels a bit depressing, but I think working class people have almost given up. We've worked very hard in the UK to make being working class something to be ashamed of. So people flee away from that identity and everyone wants to identify as middle class now. Those people who are left as working class are sneered at, unsubtly, from our leaders and in our media. We need a profound shift in the narrative here so working class people communities feel valued and valid again.

The biggest source of hope again has come through the pandemic because despite everything that I've just said, it was working class Britain that kept this country going. Even rightwing commentators had to concede the fact that if it hadn't been for working class communities we would not have been able to get through the pandemic. They did that, they kept us going. They fed us, they kept our lives going, they delivered our necessities and they cared for our grandparents. There’s an essential value in the lives of many of those we have left on the periphery.