We’re very busy behind the scenes this week and next at Turner Contemporary, getting ready for our second exhibition Nothing in the World But Youth which opens on 17 September.

Walls are being painted, artworks are being unpacked, and we’re planning events and projects. This week, we have been working with young people from King Ethelbert School, Hartsdown Technology College, Margate and Homewood School in Tenterden. They are training to be Youth Navigators, working with a practical philosopher to think about how to get visitors talking about the artworks in the exhibition. It is fantastic to see everything coming together, but I also can’t help thinking back to where the project started.

I have been working for Turner Contemporary for the last ten years, developing projects with members of the community. My work with young people in Thanet during this time planted a seed in my head: The teenagers that I met were without exception creative, kind, energetic and interesting, but this was not always how they seemed to be perceived, or represented. Why should this be the case?

In 2007, Turner Contemporary established two groups, of older people, and of younger people. They worked with artists, visited galleries, and started to become interested in each other, and on their request came together as one group in 2009. Through this project, Time of Our Lives, they began to explore the idea of what it means to be a teenager, both now and in the past. Working with artist Lucy Steggals they created a wonderful exhibition in Droit House, a recreation of a teenage bedroom, which mixed the past and present.

This important project made the richness of exploring youth culture clear to us, inspiring people of all ages to reflect on their own lives, and the lives of others. It is also a subject that is rooted in our local community, yet has national and international relevance, adding our experiences to debates globally about how societies feel about their own young people.

We became excited by the possibilities of building on Time of Our Lives, creating an ambitious exhibition in the new gallery.

Nothing in the World But Youth mirrors the excitement, energy and pulsating creativity of the young, inspiring us to present artists’ work alongside ephemera including posters, clothing, protest banners and magazines. Our research was driven by a question:  How has youth experience been reflected in art, culture and the media since adolescence emerged as a distinct phase of life?
Over the past one hundred years, young people have been both feared and admired. They are celebrated for being creative and energetic, offering a symbol of hope and possibility but are also seen to represent society’s wider fears.

Often perceived as violent, they are more likely to be victims of aggression. Adolescence is a time of extraordinary change, both physically and mentally; indeed, the physical changes within the brain help explain the shifts in mental attitude which we associate with this age.

The brain itself is larger than at any other time of our lives, and undergoes radical restructuring, and in doing so enables us to develop new ways of thinking. It produces behaviour which adults might find unreasonable; it has also, over thousands of years, been central to the evolution of the human race.Perhaps, then, teenagers share many of the conflicting qualities that we demand of our art: at once sensitive and showy, confident, and diffident, beautiful, unknowable, and just a little bit awkward.  And like nothing else.

Nothing in the World But Youth opens at 10am on Saturday 17 September, until 8 January 2012.