Welcome to ‘Learning from the Streets’ a blog by me, James Ballantyne, which at the moment has about 700 articles on it, ranging from detached youthwork, youth ministry, community development, theology, mission and Theodrama. Please do take a look around, use the menus and tags to find articles of practical help or further discussion.

My recent professional role is as the Team leader for Communities Together Durham, and the North East Activist for Frontier Youth Trust, both involve supporting youth and community workers to create appropriate and innovative responses to poverty in the North East of the UK/

My previous work experience includes being Centre Director at Durham YFC,  which involved managing and supervising youthworkers, and helping in the delivery of detached youth work, after-schools open youth clubs and schools based mentoring work in County Durham, I also coordinated detached youth work with the Sidewalk Project in Perth (Scotland) and a community project in Devion. I am qualified to MA level in Theology and Ministry at Durham University (St Johns College) and I completed an Honours degree at ICC, Glasgow, in Youthwork with Applied Theology.

I am also self employed and have delivered training and lectures for a variety off organisations and training providers including: ICC, SWYM and CYM, as well as training and seminars for Exeter YMCA, Exmouth ICE, Deep Impact (Scotland), St Andrews Episcopal Diocese (Scotland), Newcastle Diocese, Highlife Highland, Hot Chocolate Trust (Dundee),  on a variety of aspects in youthwork and ministry, such as detached youthwork, strategy and approaches, and theology and youth ministry.

Please do contact me using the form below if you require assistance on any aspect of the following

Volunteer training

Detached youthwork training, guidance, support or advice

Developing strategy and approaches to youth ministry

Theology and youth work/ministry

Managing youth workers

Supervising youth workers

Or if theres something else that you think I can help with, maybe writing, or consultancy or providing guidance or support, then please do be in contact.

Thank you for visiting this site, I hope you found reading the articles interesting and stimulating for your practice of working with young people, please comment, share anything that might be of help to you and your volunteers.

If you would like to support me financially do follow the links on the right to donate via KO-FI or direct to Paypal. Thank you.

To contact me directly do so via Jamesballantyne1978@yahoo.co.uk or leave a comment below, thank you.

You can also find me at Twitter on https://twitter.com/JamesOSM  or @Jamesosm