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At the launch of our recent Gen Z and the City report, we spoke to Canon Dr Paula Gooder, Chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral, to find out what she thinks the most important issues we can be talking about today are.
The Gen Z and the City report explores intergenerational differences in the workplace, with a focus on bridging divides and overcoming misunderstandings. The report is available to read for free on our resources page.
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Episode transcript
00:03
Chris Woods (CW)
What are the most important conversations we need to be having today and how can young people contribute to these conversations? These are the questions we ask our guests to answer in Five Minutes With… we briefly caught up with Canon Dr Paula Gooder at the launch of our Gen Z and the City report at St Paul’s Cathedral to explore the importance of intergenerational conversations.
00:23
CW
Paula is the Chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral and also freelance writer and lecturer in Biblical Studies. So now we ask what does she think is the most important conversations we can be having today?
00:34
Canon Dr Paula Gooder (PG)
I think one of the most important conversations is about intergenerational justice, actually how the impact of what’s going on in the world impacts people of different generations, particularly thinking about young people and the way in which climate change and the way in which the economic system is changing.
00:52
PG
All of those seem to be really crucially important conversations and interestingly, although we talk widely about racial justice and justice around gender and justice around sexuality, we don’t talk anything like as much about intergenerational justice.
01:08
PG
And yet intergenerational justice has its threads that go through pretty much all of the other big conversations that we’re having.
01:16
CW
And then how do we get young people involved in these conversations?
01:20
PG
I think one of them is to make sure that they know that their voices are essential to the conversation. I think one of the things that often happens is that we talk over young people. We tell them what they think and therefore actually simply inviting them into the conversation is a good thing to do.
01:36
PG
The other thing to recognise is that they will have conversations in their own way.
01:42
PG
So, I have two young daughters and most of our really good conversations are generated by TikToks and actually maybe we need to enter the conversations in a different mode and then that will mean that the young people will have much more to contribute.
02:00
CW
Produced in partnership with St Paul’s Cathedral, the Gen Z and the City report explores intergenerational differences in the workplace, with a focus on bridging divides and overcoming misunderstandings. The report is available to read for free on the resources page of the Cumberland Lodge website. You can keep up to date with all the work of Cumberland Lodge on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, X, and Facebook @CumberlandLodge or on our website, cumberlandlodge.ac.uk. Thank you again to Paula for joining us and thanks for listening.