Youth and community practitioner · Leith, Edinburgh
I'm Ryan, a youth and community practitioner. At the Citadel Youth Centre in Leith, I bring people together through youth-led projects, intergenerational work and creative digital activities.
About
I'm Ryan McKay, a youth and community practitioner based in Leith, Edinburgh. Most of my work has grown through the Citadel Youth Centre, where I've spent around a decade working with young people, older people, schools and community partners.
I started with intergenerational work through Old's Cool. Since then my role has grown to include New Spin, school-based youth work, and the development of Youth Spark and Youth Spark Digital. Direct work with people is still at the heart of what I do. I also enjoy finding connections between projects and bringing in partners who can help people explore something new.
Creativity is a big part of my practice. That might mean making a film, trying out a game, exploring local green spaces or bringing generations together to imagine the future of technology. The activity matters, but so do the conversations and relationships around it.
I'm increasingly interested in where communities, research and learning meet: how we make participation accessible, how people contribute their own knowledge, and how we share what we discover.
Young people exploring the issues that matter to them, shaping programmes and creating work to share.
Mutual learning and real relationships across generations, beyond simply sharing a room.
Games, film, AI and speculative technology as ways to express ideas and to question everyday life.
Connectivity, confidence and relationships, as well as devices.
How I work
A four-stage way of working, shaped with young people through Youth Spark. Each stage starts from what people bring, not from an answer decided in advance.
Begin with what people notice, care about or want to understand. Gather experiences and questions before fixing the answer.
Young people investigated local parks and wellbeing for Dear Green Place.
Try ideas in a low-pressure way. Games, drama and experiments help people think together.
A playdough activity opened a day of youth-led practice with the Binks Hub.
Turn an idea into something people can shape and discuss. The product can change as the group learns.
Younger and older people built speculative tech prototypes at Hack Your Age.
Bring the work into conversation with others and make the learning useful beyond the group.
Youth Spark shared its learning through a co-designed toolkit and podcast.
Projects
A youth-led programme where young people explored their concerns and interests through creative, participatory and digital approaches, then shared their learning in a co-designed toolkit. It continues as Youth Spark Digital, which I lead, with digital issues and AI as its theme and young people shaping the programme within it.
Read about Youth SparkMy intergenerational work began with Old's Cool, supporting secondary-age young people to plan, run and evaluate activities with older people. It produced films, murals and a local-history Top Trumps. Today New Spin is a regular intergenerational café in Leith where younger and older people meet, build relationships and take part together.
Read "Going Old's Cool"Five days in which younger and older people used drama and prototyping to imagine new technologies and their social implications. The group created four dramas with accompanying prototypes and closed with a community showcase.
Read my reflectionYoung people investigated local green spaces and wellbeing using community activity and research tools, work that led to a finished mural. It taught us a lot about making community-based research accessible and engaging.
Read about the partnershipWriting and media
Notes from practice
A demanding, rewarding journey, and what it showed about making research accessible and engaging.
What changes when participants help create and interpret the evidence about their own lives.
A timeline of the moments, projects and people that changed how I work.
Contact
I'm always interested in conversations about youth participation, intergenerational practice, digital inclusion and partnerships between communities and universities.