Young people are leaving Griffith but the reasons behind why are not so straightforward as looking for jobs or better opportunities.
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Young people aged 18-34 in Griffith participated as part of the Engaging Youth in Regional Australia study to share their experience weighing up whether they wanted to stay or leave after school.
Griffith was specifically chosen for its uniqueness in offering an abundance of employment opportunity and its significance in agriculture in Australia.
"The rationale was that you don't blame a regional young person for leaving a town in decline to get employment or education, but if the town has a strong economy it wants to hang on to its young people and yet they are leaving anyway," Dr Candice Boyd researcher at University of Melbourne's school of Geography said.
"We wanted to know why that is happening."
The study spoke to people who had decided to stay in Griffith, who had left Griffith and those who had left but decided to come back in their early thirties.
Griffith's tight-knit community environment was a large contributing factor to why people wanted to stay, but also why they wanted to leave.
"The people who chose to return and stay was due partly because they liked the tight-knit community. They like that feeling of security, finding comfort knowing that someone is going to look out for them," Dr Boyd said.
"But the people who couldn't wait to get out is the flip side of that. They don't like the fact that they can't walk down the street without somebody talking to them. They don't like the tight-knit community, they feel stifled and suffocated a lot of the time."
Participants who chose to return shared experiences of having a close connection to their Italian cultural heritage growing up in Griffith and that they wanted their children to have that too.
"Having those childhood memories that were associated with that cultural heritage and wanting that for their own children was something that multiple people talked about," Dr Boyd said.
Whereas contrary to that those who left felt a sense of freedom in cities that Griffith couldn't provide them Dr Boyd explained.
Stage three of the project, a photographic exhibition, will be on display as part this year's program of exhibits at Griffith Regional Art Gallery.
"Participants were asked to take photos of their town and of places there that had meaning for them and then 10 of those photos are in the exhibition," Dr Boyd said.
'Finding Home' will be open to the public in Griffith from September 3 to October 1 and will feature four of the Griffith participants.
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