IN MARCH 2020, the world turned upside down. Our schools were shut, our youth clubs cancelled, our community centres closed.

Everything we took for granted – friends, the sports pitch, the swimming pool, the cinema became precious commodities we could only afford in tiny doses – or not at all.

But we didn’t give up on each other, or ourselves, and in the pages of this journal you can witness how the young people of Headliners persevered through the worst of lockdown and illness, isolation and loneliness. They wrote, they read, they photographed, they talked and listened to one another online, they made video diaries about how they felt and encouraging others to keep their chins up, they made podcasts on everything from racism in football and poltergeists to coming out as LGBTQ and the challenges of growing up as an Irish speaker in Belfast. They persevered.

As a new spring arrives and vaccines are being administered to millions, we can finally turn our thoughts to the future and breaking out of the confines of the past year. The pages of this journal are a testament to our young people who kept hope alive.

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Thank you to The National Lottery Community Fund for their ongoing support in making these projects come to completion.