National Youth Sunday > Getting young people along > Making your venue youth friendly
Taken from NYMO’s Abide sessions
You will need to consider carefully the setup of your venue before you begin your session:
- Is there enough space to do the activities? If not, consider changing venue, using separate rooms, or scaling back the activity.
- Will the space be warm enough? Do you need to turn on the heating before the group arrive?
- Will the group sit on chairs, or will you ask them to sit on the floor? Have you thought about cushions/sofas/beanbags?
- Are you using equipment that is valuable or breakable? Have you put it out of harm’s way?
- Will all the group be able to see or hear if you are using audio-visual equipment?
- Have you got spares of all vital equipment – especially matches, bin bags, scissors, pritt sticks etc…
As part of any session, you will want to consider ‘framing’ your prayer time, by altering the mood slightly. If prayer is a small section of your evening, try framing the time by turning down the lights slightly, or moving the group into a different area with a candle as a focus. You might want to move into the main body of the church if you are in a parish meeting room, and you may want to put gentle background music on.