Creating an intentionally dialogic space: Student activism and the Newcastle Occupation 2010

Dominant discourses tend to represent young people as politically apathetic, disengaged and inert. Yet, in late 2010, tens of thousands of young people across the UK protested against government proposals to change the ways in which higher education is funded. In numerous universities across the country, students occupied buildings, facilitated protests and challenged university leaders to speak out against the proposed changes. At Newcastle University, a group of highly organised students occupied the Fine Art lecture theatre for seventeen days in late 2010 in resistance to these changes. In this paper, we draw upon a detailed analysis of twenty-seven interviews with young people who participated in the Newcastle Occupation, supplemented by participant observation of Occupation meetings. We argue that the students created an intentionally dialogic space in the Occupation in a number of ways, including how they organised it, how they used social media and the internet, the actions they participated in and the ways in which they engaged with the elite. These insights offer an important contribution to debates and young people and politics and exemplify the ways in which the student activists involved in the Newcastle Occupation were sophisticated political agents who strategically and tactfully engaged with politics matters.