In a recent survey of conducted by YouGov, on behalf the Citizenship Foundation, 54% of young people aged between 14-25 said they did not trust their local MP to tell the truth. In the same survey, 60% said they did not trust senior officials in their local council to tell the truth either. Not a picture of a very healthy democracy!
However, despite levels of mistrust, politics is still seen as important, with the majority of people (59%) still believing the biggest way of participating in a democracy was to vote, and that politicians – as opposed to the media, pressure groups and businessess – should have the most power in society.
When it comes to who should be influencing politicians, a large majority (72%) thought that the public, should have the greatest amount of influence.
As part of a Community Research project, Resident University will be working with a group of youth groups and organisations to find out what young people in Birmingham think about citizenship, politics and democracy. In particular, what they think about local decision making, and being involved at a neighbourhood and community level.
Each organisation will be supporting groups of young people to carry out their own research using a variety of different methods from film to surveys.
Resident University will then bring the groups back together to discuss the findings, and help to share them widely with other people.
To read the Citzenship Survey results in full, download the reports below.
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