The study session Attractive Youth Publishing, which took place in Strasbourg on 22-29 May 2005 was run as an independent project reflecting on IYNF campaign Gotcha, which has been developing the concept of atttractive youth work. As the title suggests the study session concentrated on ways an organisation can be or become attractive by the way it presents itself to the oustide world, but also how it communicates internally. The thought behind this activity has always been that if an organisation wants to work with young people in attractive way it should not only run attractive activities, but also be attractive by the way it presents itself, by its structure and ways it works with its volunteers and staff members. The coherent approach in all aspects of organisational life we consider as one of the elements, which make youth work attractive.
Tere were three main aims for the activity – to look at what is attractive for young people in the field of publications and PR events and provide them with such understanding, to create space for participants to practise and learn the skills needed for publishing and organising PR events and to support them in planning changes connected to the theme in their organisations.
The first aim of the study session was fulfilled by several parts of the programme, where participants analysed the publications sent to them (Coyote magazine produced under the partnership of the Council of Europe and the European Union or Ecourier – magazine produced by the International Friends of Nature, IYNF mother organisation; the other was Variety, the magazine of IYNF) and at last a publication to be chosen by themselves.
There were different opinions about the magazines looking at 3 perspectives – design, content and structure. Nevertheless all participants agreed that there are certain issues, which are important to take into consideration. A full description is enclosed as Annex I to the report.
The report does not only describe what happened at the study session, but it also includes the methods used and following reflections and results as seen by participants. It is structured day by day starting with the methodology used during the programme and goes on with reflections written by participants on their perception of the programme and at times more general reflections on attractive youth publishing.
There is a number of Annexes to the report. At the beginning one can find information directly linked to the programme and the last part shows results of participants‘ work during the study session – the Youth Area issues. Youth Area was a newsletter, which was published 3 times a week by participants of the study session for participants of the joint study session of YEU and EEE-YFU, which was run in parallel to the Attractive Youth Publishing activity in the European Youth Centre in Strasbourg. The issues of the newsletter show a great development in participants‘ understanding of the topic of attractive youth publishing from the side of desing, content and structure of youth publications.

To see the whole report from this activity please download the PDF file bellow