The Centre for Sustainable Energy (CSE) has been awarded around £1m by the National Lottery Community Fund for Pathways to Participation: youth-led climate action. The three and a half year project will transform how young people shape local climate decisions across Bristol, Swindon, Wiltshire and Dorset.

The project is co-designed by youth organisations, local councils and young people who all want the same thing – lasting routes for young people into the civic and democratic processes that shape climate action in their communities.

Young people care but the doors are closed

Young people care deeply about climate change. But research tells us that many feel shut out of the civic and democratic processes where local climate decisions are made. And when opportunities to get involved do come up, they’re often one-off events that lead nowhere.

For many young people, particularly those from underserved communities, there are no clear routes into local decision-making on climate, no trusted connections to the people with the power to act, and little support to build the skills and confidence to get involved. Caring about climate change and knowing how to have a say in what happens locally are two very different things.

Councils want to act but lack the tools

Local councils can open these doors. They can bring young people into climate strategies, connect them with existing climate action projects and turn their ideas into real change. And they want to. CSE’s survey of six South West local authorities last year found that councils recognise the value of working with young people on climate and nature action but lack the tools and structures to do it well.

The willingness is there on all sides. The need and proposed solution this project is working towards was from consultations with CSE’s Youth Advisory Board, and a range of recent studies (including Greener Swindon CYP Report and InterClimate Network’s national & local surveys. The project co-designers identified the need for research into how councils and young people can work together more effectively. CSE’s Bright Green Future alumni network of 350 young people showed significant appetite to lead that research themselves.

This new Pathways to Participation project exists because everyone involved – young people, youth organisations and councils – recognised the same gap and wanted to build a solution together.

Amy Mander, Future Generations lead at CSE, said:

Young people already care about climate change and they want to take action. What’s been missing are practical routes into the civic processes where local decisions get made.

This project builds those routes with young people, not for them. And what makes this project special is that no one designed it in isolation.

Youth organisations, councils and young people all shaped it together. That’s how local climate action needs to work if we’re going to build an equitable green future.

How ‘Pathways to Participation: youth led climate action’ will work

The project works because no single partner could do this alone. Youth organisations bring trusted relationships with young people in their communities. Councils bring the decision-making power to act on what young people say. And young people bring the ideas, the energy and the most at stake. Pathways to Participation is co-designed around the principle that only by working together can any of them create lasting change.

The project is a partnership between CSE, youth organisations WAY, Young Swindon and Wiltshire, Nature Youth Connection Education, Dorset Youth, and Swindon Borough Council, Wiltshire Council, Bristol City Council, Dorset Council, UK100 and the University of the West of England.

Youth organisations will work with underserved young people in community settings, building their skills, confidence and understanding of civic and democratic processes – how local decisions are made, who makes them, and how young people can influence them. These sessions prepare young people for what comes next. Facilitated ‘communities of action’ will bring them into the same room as council officers and elected members. Not for a one-off consultation, but for sustained partnership, agreeing actions and making them happen together.

Young people will also lead their own research into what makes youth participation work in practice, directly shaping a national ‘youth participation model’ that other areas can learn from and use.

A local project with national reach

The project is focused locally, but its ambition is national. By testing what works across four very different areas and building a replicable model, the project will create a pathway for young people across the UK to meaningfully influence local climate action.

UK100 will provide insights and share learning across its national network of local authorities, supporting youth participation to become a core part of how councils approach climate and nature strategies.

Pathways to Participation: youth-led climate action is funded by the National Lottery Community Fund.