Humour is Serious Business

‘Humour’ is the continuation of a very successful programme that took place in Derry, Northern Ireland in April 2012. This course will ‘carry on’ where it left off by building upon its initial success with a new tranche of youth workers and explore with them the role and potential that Humour has and can play as a tool for bringing about change in their locale. This course facilitates a learning journey about Humour (and as a pro-active methodology), the different types of humour that exist and its relevance to youth work practice. The programme will provide space and time for participants to examine a multitude of issues, concerns and questions related to the use of Humour in an effort to increase their skills, knowledge and experience of Humour as an effective method for engaging young people. By providing space and time to examine humour, participants can develop a better understanding of its use and application and in doing so increase their capacity to use it in their work setting to engage young people and other youth work communities in a constructive fashion, e.g., multiplier capacity or to open up issues, concerns and questions that young people have. Participants will leave the course with a variety of new (or enhanced existing) tools and skills in how to use Humour in their work setting and in their practice and also with a clear plan for developing locally-based project work as a means of engaging young people. Objectives for ‘Humour is Serious Business’ are as follows: (i) upskilling youth work practitioners in the use of humour as an effective tool for engaging young people and youth work communities (ii) enhancing knowledge of the various types of humour so as to increase understanding of how, where, when and why it can be applied (iii) increasing awareness of how humour can be used as a pro-active and deliberate methodology in youth work and not just as a natural consequence of and response to specific situations (iv) consider cultural differences in humour and understand better how these can be used to support and inform youth work practice (v) providing space and time for practitioners to reflect upon the use of their own sense of humour and consider where it can be altered to support their practice (vi) developing local humour-based programmes to test methodologies and techniques with a view to informing humour-based practice (vii) the development of a number of joint-actions between partner organisations