Giving a shit is just the beginning

Reflections on the film ‘Steve’, the power of youth services and what we can all do for the young people of our city

Hope Is Around The Corner 19th December, 2025

Nikesh Shukla

With Bristol’s youth offer in steady decline for the last ten or so years, it’s been sad to watch dedicated workers, coordinators, teachers and volunteers strive to provide spaces for young people, despite the lack of funding, space or capacity. It’s these people who make a difference. The sad thing is, they rarely get acknowledged.

I was thinking about this recently, watching the film Steve, at a screening in Watershed. It’s based on the novel ‘Shy’ by my dear friend and comrade, writer Max Porter. It’s a film about people — youth workers, teachers, project managers — who give a shit. About lost, troubled young men caught in the reform and rehabilitation system. About the youth workers, teachers, project managers who give a shit. It follows Cillian Murphy’s titular character, Steve, a head teacher having a very bad day and a boy he looks after, who’s also having a bad day.

In the Q&A afterwards, with Max, producer Alan Moloney and one of the film’s stars, Jay Lycurgo, we spoke about the importance of films like this, that meet the moment in some way, offering a humane response to society’s ills. The film is knotty and complicated and doesn’t saintify anyone. If anything, it revels in the muck of people’s lives and shows that trying to make the world a better place takes all of us.

I often worry that being a writer, even one writing politically, is largely unimportant in the grand scheme of things. The only thing I do that’s of any use, any service, is mentoring — helping young people to communicate their thoughts, ideas and feelings, using sentences, images, words, one after the other.

I was recently catching up with a writer I once mentored, during my time running a youth project for Watershed for five years until 2018. They’re now a successful young thing, with a podcast, a novel, a media empire, a person of note. We were joking about what their career might have looked like had they not spent those few months in the Pervasive Media Studio, balancing their laptop on a thin ledge, perched on an uncomfortable stool, working away. Sometimes, we acknowledged, it’s the open door, sometimes, it’s the invitation to walk through the door, and more often than not, it’s the people making the invitation that make a difference. I can tangibly see the difference a youth project had in that writer’s career. Because her friends invited her through the door, there was somewhere to park, and I encouraged her to stay.

I first joined Watershed to set up Rife Magazine in 2013. It was a youth magazine aimed at publishing content from young creatives. My job as editor was not just to run the magazine, edit all the pieces and decide what to commission. It was much more than that. It was to be an editor, a mentor, a critical friend and in a lot of places, a listener to a lot of young people.

Over the years, we had incredible people move through our doors, from directors Ryan Francis and Yero Timi-Biu, to writers like Liv Little and Varaidzo to creatives like Tone, Jazz Thompson, Sammy Jones, Jon Aitken and more than I could list. 

At Rife, I received mentoring training. One thing that stuck with me was: never underestimate the power of active listening. Mentoring isn’t about telling people what to do. Or how you would go about doing a project. It’s about listening, helping clarify intentions, asking questions, reflecting back what someone’s trying to do. It’s about triaging and troubleshooting when a project might go wrong, being a steady hand and an open ear.

Rife magazine doesn’t exist anymore. Youth clubs and services have had to close due to a lack of funding. Projects need volunteers. There are so many of us out there who feel frozen when looking at the news, unsure of what to do. What we can do is give some time. I’m not saying that would fix any of the world’s problems, any of Bristol’s ills or suddenly uncover a magic money tree that funds all of the provision for young people in the city. But it will make a difference. Which is what Steve is trying to say. 

I have to remind myself that making a difference isn’t about a world-quaking post or article. Making a change is small. James Baldwin once said, “you write in order to change the world, knowing perfectly well that you probably can’t… The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it.”

I think these words are ones to live by in these times. Perhaps together, one young person who deserves to be heard at a time, we can make a difference. Bristol Cable readers are, I imagine, ones who give a shit. But the work doesn’t end with giving a shit. It’s only the beginning.