Back the Off Topic Campaign
Help Bring Student Experience Into the Conversation
Off Topic is YOUTHOOD’s first Strategic Flagship Campaign, placing young people’s everyday experiences of education at the centre of a wider conversation about how students are understood, supported and enabled to thrive.
The campaign will begin in Manchester with the Student Experience Common Room, bringing young people and education professionals into carefully designed spaces to examine the school and education system beyond attainment, attendance and behaviour alone.
We are seeking organisations and supporters who can help make this first anchor event possible through financial backing, practical resources, professional expertise or in-kind support.
Your support can help us create a meaningful, safeguarded and non-extractive experience for every young person and professional taking part, while building the foundations for the learning generated in Manchester to influence the wider Off Topic campaign.
Help us place student experience at the centre of how we understand belonging, confidence, identity, growth and achievement.
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Putting Student Experience At The Centre
Education is often understood through what can be measured: attainment, attendance, behaviour, progression and performance. These measures matter, but they do not fully explain what it feels like to be a student or how that experience shapes a young person’s development.
A student’s experience of school can influence their sense of belonging, confidence and identity, as well as how safely they participate, form relationships, engage with learning and imagine their future. These experiences do not sit outside educational outcomes. They help shape the conditions through which growth and achievement become possible.
Yet, when education is discussed, the wider student experience can be treated as secondary or placed “off topic”. The Off Topic campaign deliberately turns that framing on its head. It widens the conversation beyond what happens academically to examine how young people experience the environments, relationships, expectations and systems surrounding their education.
Off Topic does not seek to replace conversations about educational standards or outcomes. It asks what those conversations miss when student experience is not given equal attention, and how education might change when young people’s experiences are treated as a source of insight rather than an issue beside the main agenda.
Student experience is not separate from education. It shapes how young people belong, participate, grow and achieve.
The Manchester Student Experience Common Room
The Off Topic campaign will begin with the Manchester Student Experience Common Room, its Kickstarter Anchor Event and the first space through which the campaign’s central questions will be explored collectively.
The Common Room will bring together young people and education professionals from across Manchester to examine the student experience from their different, but connected, perspectives. It will create space to explore how identity and belonging, relationships, educational provision and the wider school environment influence how young people participate, develop and achieve.
The event is designed as more than a one-day consultation. Through YOUTHOOD’s Campaign-Embedded Dual-LENS, young people and professionals will first reflect within separate, carefully facilitated spaces. Their insights will then be brought into a structured Convergence Space, allowing areas of connection, difference and shared responsibility to be considered without expecting young people to defend or repeatedly retell their experiences.
Learning from the Common Room will establish the groundwork for the wider campaign. It will help YOUTHOOD identify the experiences requiring greater attention, the questions that institutions need to confront and the areas in which practice, policy or partnership could better support students.
By beginning in Manchester, Off Topic can move from a broad concern about student experience towards evidence shaped by those who live and work within education every day.
The Common Room will not simply ask what students experience. It will examine what those experiences reveal about the conditions through which they are expected to belong, grow and achieve.
Who Will Be In The Room
The Manchester Student Experience Common Room will bring together approximately 64 young people, education professionals, facilitators and supporting contributors from across Manchester.
At its centre will be 25 students from five secondary schools, with each participating school inviting five young people. The event will also involve accompanying education professionals who bring experience of supporting students and working within the systems, relationships and practical realities of school life.
Young people and professionals will contribute through different but connected routes. Students will have a dedicated space to explore their experiences in their own right, while professionals will reflect separately upon the structures, practices and pressures shaping those experiences. Neither group will be expected to speak for everyone, reach an artificial consensus or provide immediate solutions.
YOUTHOOD facilitators and approved campaign contributors will support the event’s delivery, safeguarding and learning. Any partner representatives involved in youth-facing activity will participate through a clearly defined and appropriately safeguarded role. Financial or practical support will not itself provide unrestricted access to young people or their experiences.
Bringing these perspectives together allows the Common Room to recognise that student experience is shaped across a wider educational environment. Young people hold essential insight into how that environment is lived, while professionals can help examine how institutional responsibilities, constraints and opportunities influence what students encounter.
How the Common Room Works
The Manchester Student Experience Common Room will follow a carefully structured journey designed to protect independent reflection while creating opportunities for shared understanding.
The day will begin with young people and education professionals entering separate spaces through YOUTHOOD’s Campaign-Embedded Dual-LENS model. This allows each group to consider student experience from its own position, without young people’s contributions being shaped by professional authority or professionals being expected to respond immediately to individual experiences.
Students will explore their experience of school through activities that consider:
how they understand and navigate the wider education system;
what they wish teachers and schools better understood about the experience of being a student; and
what they believe should change across schools and the wider education system.
These activities will create space for students to reflect on the environments, relationships, expectations and forms of provision shaping their school experience. This may surface questions relating to identity, belonging, confidence, participation, growth and achievement, without requiring students’ contributions to follow predetermined themes or conclusions.
The day will also include breaks and Skills Development Reset Sessions, giving participants opportunities to step away from the campaign discussion, develop practical skills and return to the wider process with renewed focus.
Learning captured throughout the Common Room will inform the next stages of Off Topic. Contributions will be handled through YOUTHOOD’s ethical evidence-capture processes, with clear boundaries around consent, anonymity, safeguarding and how participants’ insights may be used.
Education professionals will undertake a parallel but distinct series of activities, examining student experience from their professional and institutional positions. Areas of conversation will explore systemic barriers, challenges, pressures, and the change professionals want to see in the education system.
The precise activities within each separate space will remain protected, helping participants engage independently without anticipating, rehearsing or responding directly to the other group’s contributions.
Skills Development Reset Sessions
The Common Room will include Skills Development Reset Sessions, creating intentional space between the campaign’s main stages for participants to pause, shift focus and engage in practical learning.
These sessions are not designed to investigate student experience or gather further campaign evidence. They provide a purposeful change of pace, recognising that sustained reflection on education, belonging and desired change can require significant emotional and cognitive energy.
Delivered by approved partner organisations or professionals, the sessions may introduce young people and education professionals to practical skills, knowledge or opportunities that support their wider development. Their content may relate to areas such as communication, confidence, creativity, collaboration, wellbeing, leadership or future pathways, depending on the expertise offered and its suitability for participants.
Skills Development Reset Sessions must remain accessible, participatory and appropriate for the age and needs of those involved. They must not be used to gather personal information on lived experience or secure access to young people for purposes outside the event. Any contributing partner will work with YOUTHOOD in advance to agree the session’s purpose, content, safeguarding arrangements and delivery boundaries.
Although distinct from the Campaign-Embedded Dual-LENS process, the sessions contribute to the quality of the wider day. They allow participants to step away from intensive reflection, encounter something practically valuable and return to the Common Room’s shared work with renewed focus.
For partners, delivering a Skills Development Reset Session offers a meaningful way to contribute professional expertise directly to the event. It does not provide access to participants’ protected insights or create an entitlement to influence the campaign’s findings.
A Protected and Non-Extractive Space
The Common Room is designed to enable meaningful insight without requiring young people to expose, defend or repeatedly retell personal experiences for the benefit of organisations or professionals.
Participants will be invited to reflect on the experience of being a student, but they will not be expected to disclose personal information, identify individual members of staff or revisit experiences they would prefer to keep private. Young people will retain choice over what they contribute, how they contribute and whether they participate in a particular activity.
The separate Dual-LENS spaces help protect this independence. Young people can reflect without professional authority being present in their space, while education professionals can examine their own responsibilities, assumptions and institutional contexts without being positioned to challenge or respond to individual students. Insights will later enter the Convergence Space through facilitated interpretation, rather than through direct confrontation or demands for personal testimony.
Young people’s experiences should inform change without becoming the price of their participation.
YOUTHOOD will establish clear boundaries around:
voluntary participation and informed consent;
confidentiality and its safeguarding limits;
evidence capture and the use of contributions;
anonymity and the removal of identifying details;
photography, recording and public storytelling;
emotional safety and routes to pause or withdraw;
disclosures, concerns and safeguarding responses; and
access to participants and their information.
Partners, supporters and other contributors will not receive unrestricted access to young people, raw contributions or identifiable participant information. They must not use the event to collect contact details, develop promotional content, undertake independent research or invite young people to share personal experiences beyond the agreed purpose of their involvement.
Any learning communicated beyond the Common Room will focus on collective patterns, areas of difference and questions for change. YOUTHOOD will not present individual experiences as representative of all students, manufacture consensus between participants or make claims that extend beyond the evidence gathered.
What Your Support Can Help Make Possible
The Manchester Student Experience Common Room requires more than the activities taking place on the day. Open each area below to see how financial, practical and in-kind support can help create a safe, accessible and purposeful event.
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An accessible Manchester venue with suitable areas for young people and professionals to reflect separately, participate in Skills Development Reset Sessions and enter structured convergence.
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Appropriate catering and refreshments for young people, education professionals, facilitators and supporting contributors throughout the event.
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The practical resources needed to deliver accessible and participatory activities, including event materials, equipment, technology, printing and campaign resources.
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Trained facilitators, safeguarding arrangements and appropriate event support to ensure that every part of the Common Room is delivered responsibly.
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Adjustments and practical support that reduce barriers to participation and enable young people and professionals with different needs to engage meaningfully.
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The ethical capture and interpretation of learning from the Common Room, helping turn collective insight into questions, resources and opportunities for continued engagement and influence.
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The organisational work required before, during and after the event, including school engagement, partner coordination, delivery planning and participant communications.
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Help YOUTHOOD connect with Manchester schools, education professionals and relevant sector networks. By widening awareness of the Common Room and opening routes into diverse school communities, supporters can help young people and professionals from across Manchester participate in and contribute to the campaign.
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Support Off Topic to share its campaign learning through regional and national education networks, professional communities, school leadership spaces and relevant policy conversations. By opening routes into these spaces, supporters can help the campaign’s independently developed outputs reach those positioned to shape educational practice, strategy and policy.
Participating schools will ordinarily arrange and meet the cost of travel for their students and accompanying staff. Where resources allow, wider support may help YOUTHOOD respond to an access barrier that would otherwise prevent participation.
Contributions may take different forms. An organisation might fund a defined part of the event or provide a venue, catering, equipment, professional expertise, communications assistance or another practical resource that reduces delivery costs.
Your support can help create the conditions in which young people and professionals contribute safely, reflect honestly and shape what Off Topic does next.
Ways to Support the Campaign
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Provide financial backing towards the planning, coordination and delivery of the Common Room. Support may fund the event as a whole or contribute towards an agreed area such as catering, accessibility, materials, safeguarding or campaign development.
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Offer an accessible Manchester venue or provide catering, equipment, printing, technology and other practical resources needed to deliver a safe and engaging event.
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Deliver a Skills Development Reset Session for young people and/or education professionals. Sessions should offer practical value, provide a purposeful change of focus during the day and align with the event’s safeguarding and participation standards.
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Help YOUTHOOD connect with Manchester schools, education professionals and relevant networks that could support participation in the Common Room or engage with the campaign as it develops.
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Open routes for Off Topic’s independently developed learning and outputs to enter regional and national education networks, professional communities, school leadership spaces and relevant policy conversations.
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Contribute relevant expertise to strengthen areas such as accessibility, safeguarding, event delivery, communications, design, evaluation or campaign development.
Support can be offered individually or through a wider partnership package shaped around your organisation’s resources and the campaign’s needs. YOUTHOOD will work with prospective supporters to identify a contribution that is useful, proportionate and responsibly delivered.
There is more than one way to help Off Topic move from a Manchester conversation towards wider educational change.
Responsible Partnership and Shared Safeguarding
Every partnership supporting the Manchester Student Experience Common Room will be built around a shared commitment to young people’s safety, dignity and meaningful participation.
YOUTHOOD will retain responsibility for the event’s overall design, safeguarding framework and campaign integrity. Partner organisations will work with us to ensure that their staff, sessions, resources and involvement are suitable for the role they undertake and consistent with the Common Room’s participation boundaries.
Where partner-associated staff will engage directly with young people, the partner organisation will be responsible for ensuring that they have received appropriate safeguarding preparation and hold an approved DBS check where their role is eligible for one. During Skills Development Reset Sessions, contributing partners will hold a direct safeguarding responsibility alongside YOUTHOOD and participating school staff.
Partners providing venues, catering, equipment or wider event support will also contribute to a safe environment. This includes recognising and responding appropriately to immediate concerns, maintaining suitable physical and emotional conditions, and understanding that discussions surrounding student experience may affect participants even when their own role does not involve exploring lived experience directly.
Partnership does not provide unrestricted access to young people, their personal information or protected campaign contributions. It also does not purchase influence over safeguarding decisions, evidence, findings or campaign positions. Roles, responsibilities and boundaries will be agreed in advance so that every organisation understands how it contributes to a safe, ethical and purposeful event.
Explore the Full Proposal and Our Commitments
Learn more about the campaign opportunity, the support currently needed and the principles governing how YOUTHOOD receives and works with support.
Could Your Organisation Help?
Whether you can provide funding, practical resources, professional expertise, sector connections or a Skills Development Reset Session, we would welcome a conversation about how your organisation could support Off Topic.