It has now reached the end of this year, and it would be difficult to say that it was boring and uneventful. Many people may feel that they would want to leave the memories behind while others want to grasp onto them as a lesson of what we all went through. A group of people who feel that they are affected are the young people of Hackney. After substantial events such as Trump and Brexit, the latter being more close to home, they feel that there will be certain repercussions oozing into 2017.

After interviewing Yasemin, 16 she says that “their outcome shows how important voting is” as the two events were focused on the peoples vote solely. However, there was a false sense of security being enforced that “everything would be okay” no matter the consequences, even if they were ‘bad’. But yet, once Brexit came along, people, especially the youth soon began to feel that the “system is a fix”. There wasn’t much care for the young people seeing as it was mainly their future and their voices were hardly heard. Stephanie, 16 also states that people shouldn’t necessarily feel too “safe” and secure as controversial leaders will “fully be in power”. However another local, Israel, 17 felt that some people just “don’t care” as they still will “live their life as normal” no matter any surrounding on goings. He felt that “just because the world is changing it doesn’t mean we have to change with it” as there will always be aspects of things you will not like. Overall, he felt young people like himself “shouldn’t be too worried” as they will have a chance to take action once they are older.

On the whole, the main idea I gained was that people felt that racism and sexism and other unacceptable ideologues would be on the rise due to these events and it would be weird to see such things in such a diverse borough like Hackney. However, there should not be a loss of hope as the best way to predict the future is to create it. The creators of course being the young people of today who will use their knowledge of now to benefit the upcoming years.

Aishah Islam, City and Islington College