What Our Young People Have Told Us
Introduction
Seton Public Health commissioned Tadhg Devlin, a local photographer and researcher based in Sefton to explore the views of our local young people on what keeps them well. This was done through a collaborative process of Tadhg working with the young people on creating photography to help illustrate their thoughts and views. Chapter 3 summarises these case studies and the photography that has come from this collaborative process.
Gabby
"One day when I was only two years old I visited my cousins so my mum was sitting with my aunty and they went ‘Oh look outside’ and I was walking around on one of her horses and that started it all. Cos I’ve always been an animal lover, always have been and always will be. And that just started everything and it was a bit of an obsession really.
A lot of people when they first start out, they can be quite selfish and they want to do things for them, rather than for the horse but once you get more into it you realise ‘this horse needs me to be like this, for its health’. It’s a big responsibility because a lot of things can go wrong with horses, they have a lot of diseases, they can go downhill. But I do think it’s been a big help for me to realise, actually ‘this thing relies on me so I need to go and do it.
Say if you want to lay in bed all day cos you’re feeling a bit down, horses rely on you so you need to be there for them. And it does get you up and going even if you don’t want to. And once you’re there, you realise ‘Oh no, it wasn’t actually that bad’ it’s just the whole getting there, cos it can become a huge thing if you’re feeling, not great.
And to be in the fresh air as well, it builds up a tolerance to things. I don’t know what it is but it hardens you up a bit. It makes you think ‘No, come on, you’re not gonna let this stop you from doing something you love’ cos I know some people when they’re ill they’re like, UHHH. But I’m not like that, I just get on with it and I think part of that is because of the horses, cos once you do it, you’re fine and then you can lay in bed"
Brandon
"I’ve only been going fishing since April last year so I’m not been fishing long but with fishing I find it dead peaceful and calming even. You know there’s a lot of people my age and they mightn’t get up at 4 o’clock in the morning to go fishing. So sort of the reason it helps me is that I’m doing something that I like but the reason that I’m doing it is that I’m with lads that I get along with and I enjoy spending time with. Do you know when you’re setting up your rod, you hear the birds tweeting in the sky, you don’t really think. You’re just in wherever, I don’t know how to word this. You’re just in that space, in that surrounding and you’re just taking it in and you’re enjoying it as well. A lot of times when I’ve been fishing and I’ve just listened, listening to the silence, it just helps you sort of just, chill.
The fishing helped me, sort of, you’re not within your thoughts but you’re also there are times when you can be in your thoughts and it helps you sort of, think about them. You know you’re looking out onto the lake and you’re just sitting there, you’re thinking. It helped me a lot.
We usually leave here about half six and then we go to where we need to go and start fishing about eight o’clock at the latest and pack up at three and then we’re on the road again.The day before we cycle down to the dock road to get everything ready like the bait and the maggots. The last time it was terrible because it was really raining, it was terrible. It was pouring down with rain. We got totally drenched, we could hardly see, Tez came off his bike but it was fun and we all had a laugh."
Martha and Iris
"All through our childhood, we did a lot of sports. When we finished playing football, we’d been playing for maybe 10 years and then we were thinking ‘we’ve got to do another sport and another way to keep us fit’ but not individual sports as we wanted to do a team sport. Because in a team sport you progress yourself but you also have others to lean on and other people to rely on. And then coming down, you’d train on a Thursday and play a game on a Saturday, so they were the days we would come down and then we would stay and watch the other games. So you were active, but active in a fun way so it didn’t seem like a chore. It never felt like that, if it did, I don’t think we would have stayed as long as we did.
Everyone always talks about endorphins when you’re doing exercise and at the end of a run, I always feel fabulous but you don’t have anyone to share that with when you’ve been running on your own. Whereas if you’ve just played a hockey match, you’ve got all those endorphins and whether you win or lose you’ve still got people to talk about it. In the run up to our cup games everyone was boosting each other up. We had to play two games back to back and when we played the first game, everyone was still trying to keep each other riled up and make sure everyone pushed and tried their hardest. We didn’t win but we came second.
I think we were all proud of that."
Kath
"I don’t think about the negatives much, I try to keep myself open and talk to everyone. I normally try and support and cheer-lead everyone because I know a lot of people don’t do that. I normally try and give myself the role of cheerleader to make sure everybody is happy but other than that, I just remind myself that I’m trying my hardest and that’s all I can do.
I’m a digital artist, I draw for a living. I post online and stuff, I also post to some friends. I’m normally known for drawing video game characters and that’s about it but I’m also known for my photo editing. I’ve said characters and I also do layouts, profile pages and banners for people for their profiles. And I also make music it’s digital, 8-bit music kind of like retro music. I don’t do it very much, only when I’m in the mood for it really. Some people call me a jack of all trades. I’m kind of just in the zone when I’m doing creative things and I go into a sort of zone and I kind of just lock in and do the things that make me happy. I like doing things that make me lock in because it makes all the worries in my head go away. I especially like drawing horror stuff, I love horror.
I feel like being online and social media is a good thing but it can negatively affect people mentally. I’ve come to learn that you should stop making things for other people and just start making it for yourself because if you make things for other people, you just stop enjoying it. I also feel like the Internet is like a very big eyeball and it will look at you under a microscope to find any flaws so I’ve just stopped caring about what people think on the Internet because at the end of the day, they’re just a bunch of people on computers and I’m outside.(Laughter)
On the news when you hear about young people talking, it’s always the attractive ones or the smart ones and the only time you hear about disabled people is for like sob stories or a sympathy point. And half the time it’s someone else talking on their behalf and I’m kind of sick and tired of it since I’m autistic and I’m ADHD and I have a physical disability. I feel like disabled people’s voices should be heard but not in a sense of “oh feel sympathy for me“ I feel like disabled people’s voices should belong. I’m sick and tired of this world treating disabled people like they’re just nothing and that’s my experience of the past seven years of being disabled, they don’t really treat you like a human."
Mark
This is Mark who spends his time working with his hands. He enjoys being able to spend time creating things from materials and seeing it all come together. Mark told us “having this job has meant I can enjoy my life and not worry as much as I used to about money. That frees my head up a bit.
Shannon
"I think mental health is quite important but people express theirs differently so as a person when I’m doing my art I like to be unique. I like to explore bright colours, I don’t like doing plain simple drawings because I like to express how I’m feeling when I’m drawing so I use a lot of bright colours and glitters just to show that this is how I felt while doing this. Some days I use a lot of dark colours but it just helps me express how I feel and it shows that I’m doing okay. When growing up I thought social media was basically true and everything you heard on it was true and you had to basically rely on your life around social media. So when I experienced that not all things are, basically it’s not good for you because you start to overthink, your mental health starts to get a lot lower so I now enjoy having me time.
Covid was a lot harder for me. I was a care home assistant for five years and I had seen a huge change since lockdown. I had 153 residents pass on me due to Covid. Seeing people deteriorate just by one little disease was really hard and mental health wise, I was working 8 til 8 Monday to Friday so I was very much work, work, work, work; I never had me time and seeing the residents pass it was very emotional and I never had to experience so much of a hold back of emotions because you just had to carry on with it being a job but deep down inside it was heartbreaking."
Lewis
"One of my teachers mentioned that there was a job opportunity in the IT department of the college. I thought “You’ve gotta take the chance” so amazingly with all the references and my experience in my course, they offered me the opportunity to be their IT, first and second line technician to then become now, their IT service desk coordinator.
I do, when I’m not too busy, like to go on walks, sometimes with and
without music, I prefer going out to Crosby Beach for instance and walking with headphones, just watching people go by and getting a breath of fresh air cause I don’t usually go out in the day I usually just work in the office so it’s good getting out of the office to have a bit of space and a bit of time to think and process what’s gone on in the
day, helps a lot. Just so I can say ‘Right that’s it for today, see where I can go tomorrow’.
