Chantelle Diachina, Gina Farrugia, and Grant Hopcroft discuss the opportunities and challenges for retaining young people in London. Photo: Kevin Van Lierop
Today I was trying to answer this question in a group discussion at AgendaCamp. Most of the time we talked about reasons to not stay in London.
Personally, I moved back to London in 2000 after finishing school to regroup before figuring out what to do with my life… And I stayed in London because I’m still figuring out what to do with my life.
To be honest I don’t think there is an answer to that question (I mean, the question about retaining young people — though I’m increasingly inclined to think the other question doesn’t have an answer either).
There is no reason for a 20-something to stay in London.
But at the same time, there are lots of reasons.
While there’s no magnetic attraction to draw masses of young people, there are also an infinite number of possible niches and opportunities to retain a few of the right individuals who are naturally suited for London’s character and pace.
The answer our group came up with (notes are here and earlier ones here) can be summarized roughly as
London offers opportunities to have an impact than a young person would have in a larger city. Social networks can be more intimate and diverse at the same time, with more access to the kind of dialogs we had today.
[Update: To be clear, credit for that goes to the group but it was Kevin Van Lierop who nailed the "opportunities to have an impact" phrase, building on James Wilkinson's comments and with elaboration mostly my Jodi Simpson. I contributed very little.]
It sort of contradicted a lot of our criticism in that session and others that the older generations’ established power networks are too comfortable (that was expressed by both young and old alike) with the notion that young people, regardless of talent, need to “wait their turn.”
Of course, the most talented tend to chose to go wait in a city that’s a lot more fun in the mean time.
Either way, I think we can best resolve the situation by coming back to the idea articulated by Kevin in the session that it’s about personal impact through genuine human connections, embracing people who are the right fit, sending the right signals to students so they know exactly what kind of city London is, and demonstrating we’re willing to invest in their future — our future.
Any attempt at setting up top-down programs will be inherently difficult — if not completely counterproductive — especially if they are explicitly targeting young people.
Young people don’t want to be targeted. They don’t want to be young people. They want to be whoever they decide they’re going to be, on their own terms.
I remember reading a case study — can’t find it now — explaining that Teen Spirit deodorant failed because teens, in a sense, didn’t think of themselves as teens. Young people aspire to be older. Marketing needs to aim a few years higher if it’s going to be explicit about demographics.
Or we could just keep demographics out of the message and simply start doing more things right. If we want to appeal to young people the first thing we need to do is give them the impression the city is moving forward.
If they see London moving forward more of them will want to be a part of that.
Most of these steps are things that London — and any city — should constantly try to improve anyways: continuing to vitalize the core, becoming more eco-conscious, making sure there’s decent and affordable places to live available in vibrant neighbourhoods, enabling diversity to continue thriving, facilitating healthy lifestyles, and becoming a more digitally connected city (not just in terms of hard wires and wifi but in terms of becoming a lot more digitally active, sophisticated and savvy).
By comparison, if younger generations see the city simply preserving existing structures and mindsets (whether or not that’s the case; what’s important is what people perceive), it will always be an uphill battle trying to attract & retain them.
If London promotes a positive identity (genuinely, not just in the form of platitudes) and people choose to live here for positive and appropriate reasons (not apathetic ones like mine) and they’re are allowed to invest their skills and interests in suitable challenges — to experience a sense of personal growth and belonging — then the rest starts taking care of itself and the strategic outlook becomes more clear.
Growing London’s appeal to young people is going to be won by margins, constantly building individual success upon individual success. To put it simply, we need to retain just enough graduates from this year’s classes so they can send the message to next year’s graduates… and so on.
Progress is going to occur largely on a personal level. It’s going to have to go through the channels young people are already hooked into and where they’ve already invested their trust.
This is just the kind of hyper-connected, hyper-personal world we live in now.
It’s the lesson every marketer has had to learn with the advent of social media. Every decent book on the subject — from Cluetrain to Trust Agents — makes essentially the same case.
Looking at the bigger picture, these principles are good in themselves. Making our civic life more open & engaging has all kinds of benefits in terms of quality, sustainability, and effectiveness of governance going beyond talent retention.
It’s something we need to be working on, like, today.
Oh right — we are…
Tune in to tomorrow night’s episode of the TVO’s The Agenda, live from UWO. Today was a great experience and I can’t wait to see what fruit it might bear — not just tomorrow but through the course of the year and beyond, keeping the momentum up with similar events.
P.S. Jobs certainly don’t hurt either.
Update: Photo by Kevin Van Lierop via Flickr.
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Your group's observation regarding the opportunity in London to establish strong – and diverse – social networks really resonates with me, Brian.
The only thing keeping me in London (other than my current job) is my combined network of personal and professional contacts. I don't have any family in town, but my Wortley Village neighbours fill that void almost entirely.
And I'm intimately connected to my professional peer group, which is creative, collaborative, and rarely competitive.
In a city the size of London, it's possible to know almost every person and organization in your field. Whether or not that's a good thing is debatable, I suppose.
Interestingly, my university roommate, who lives and works in downtown Toronto, asked my advice recently regarding joining a professional network: she was feeling isolated in her field and marveled at my apparent connectedness to a powerful support network.
Turns out London really does have something to offer the young professional…
Good points, Brian. I grew up in St.Thomas and when it came time to leave, I certainly wasn't looking to London. Toronto was the destination of choice, and I lived there for five years. I've lived in London for about six years now, and I've seen slow but steady improvement. Not nearly enough, however, if we want to retain more people and keep the city competitive.
Hey Brian, I like this post. I have something to add to this conversation. I blog for London Fuse. Check it out, let me know what you think.
Hi Savanah, thanks. I post occasionally at Fuse too. Great way to keep informed about cool people doing interesting things in London I'd otherwise miss.
I'm relatively new to London… moved here in May for Grad school. I love it here – the running trails, the beautiful topography and old homes in North London, the entire Western bubble, and, from what I can observe as an outsider, a pretty bumping local arts scene.
As great as this city is for a university student, most of my classmates agree that after graduation, it's time to move on to a city with more jobs for journalism majors and creative types. I know that there are probably opportunities here as well, but London lacks the edge and excitement of a larger city – or even a smaller city like Windsor where there's more going on. A lot of my friends say the same thing – “London would be great to come back to later in my career, when I'm ready to settle down…” Perhaps we haven't had enough time to plant roots… but it's kind of true what they say about London being a bit snotty and sterile. It's hard to break into a community anywhere, but I've never felt particularly welcome here as a 20 something single person.
I have no idea what I'll do when I'm done with school at this point – maybe I will stay – but more than likely, I'll be off to Toronto like everybody else to get lost in the rat race until I burn out…
What – the geek dinner community isn't good enough for you?? ;)
I know what you're saying. “London lacks the edge and excitement” is a good way of putting it. I noticed that after I went to school in Hamilton – like Windsor, it isn't bigger than London but it has more colour and grit that makes it feel like more's happening. After a few years though the character started getting old – likewise Vancouver.
I haven't made it out to one of their events yet but there seem to be a lot of cool people in the London Creative Network (LCNGroup link down there somewhere in the tweets).
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