AGILIZACIÓN DEL LEVANTE

Once the focus of each action project had been agreed upon, the young people had to decide how they would approach the project. In the school group, the young people were keen to ask the school to make all of the toilets in the school gender neutral. This was a feasible request, given that the school building was a relatively new building that had been designed with individual toilets in separate rooms, each with their own sink and mirror. At that point, each of these rooms were allocated for use by either 'male' or 'female' students, and had signs on the door that reflected this. As such, it was realistic for the school to change the signage to make all of these toilets gender neutral.

Initially, the young people had joked about taking action into their own hands and removing the signs from the toilets.

Winston: I say we go get some crowbars and get rid of the signs on the toilet doors!

However, the young people quickly realised that a more prudent course of action might be to attempt to secure support from members of the school staff. They decided to directly approach the school headteacher and attempt to convince him to aid them in making the change. To do this, they chose to write their proposal as a formal letter, and allow him to read this letter before he discussed their ideas with them.

The actual process of composing this letter was one that took several meetings. The young people logged onto the main computer in our meeting room, and projected the letter onto the interactive whiteboard as they worked on it. This allowed the whole group to easily see the letter as it was being written, and also allowed two people - both the person on the computer, and the person with the interactive marker - to control the cursor and actively aid in the letter- writing process. Working on the letter was therefore a process in which the whole group was involved and engaged. Throughout the process, the young people took it in turns to shout suggestions, bickered with each other over wording and grammar, and triumphantly proof- read and checked their final effort.

The meetings spent writing this formal letter were relatively different from the normal format of our meetings, and from the prioritisation of either speaking or academic writing. As it was noted in the research section of this chapter, different forms of research can allow different

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participants to thrive and participate (McIntyre 2008; Cahill 2007a). It is also possible that the action stage of the project can likewise allow different participants to flourish and take ownership of this stage of the project. In the school project, one participant in particular became much more vocal and assertive in this stage of the project. Deano had often taken a quieter role in the discussion groups, allowing some of the more vocal members of the group to take the lead in conversations. However, in the letter-writing process, Deano increasingly volunteered ideas and advice.

Deano: What's the school motto? Hannah: Where people thrive?

Deano: And allowing people to thrive. Winston: Quote it.

Deano: And express themselves. Something like that.

In this section of dialogue, Deano can be seen proposing that the group linked the letter to the school motto. Deano appeared to be confident with the formal writing process, and easily saw how the group could relate the letter to wider currents and discourses within the school. The group ended up using Deano's proposal in the final conclusion of the letter.

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After they had written the letter, the young people invited the headteacher into a meeting to discuss their propositions. They gave him the letter they had written, printed and signed, allowed him to read it, and then discussed the contents of the letter with him. The headteacher was supportive of the proposal, and gave incredible amounts of encouragement to the young people. After the meeting, he discussed the proposal with other members of the senior leadership team and the building owners, and then emailed the young people to let them know that the school would support their proposal, and that these changes would be made in the next few months.

In the youth group, the action project upon which the group had settled involved the young people attempting to encourage support for media projects that provided good representations of LGBT+ people, with particular emphasis on the place of trans or non-binary individuals in the media. Together, they pooled their knowledge to produce a list of different music, TV shows, films, video games and apps which they felt did this.

F I G U R E S E V E N : T H E L G B T + S U P P O RT I V E ME D I A L I S T

After this, they then discussed two different paths of action that they could take with this list. The first was to acknowledge the importance of sharing this list amongst themselves, and thus promoting this media amongst themselves. The second was to further publish this list, and make more young people aware of it. One of the young people suggested they make an image or visual display of the list, which could be easily circulated digitally through Facebook and other social media sites. Initially, the group were enthusiastic about this plan, and one member

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of the group volunteered to begin the process of making this visual display. However, as the end of the project drew near, and the visual display showed no sign of progress, the group's enthusiasm waned, and they decided to stick to their first idea of personally engaging with the media they had discovered through their combined knowledge, supporting it, and in turn promoting it, in a more organic style. In this sense, the young people decided to engage in one of the smaller, more personal forms of action that can often go unnoticed in PAR projects compared to the more tangible forms of action that make take place in other projects such as the school project (Reid 2006).