Stamp collecting not so nerdy

In a society that is becoming increasingly obsessed with relegating face-to-face communication to a succession of keystrokes on a blog, a Facebook status update, or a 140-character ‘tweet’, you might be forgiven for wondering whether young people have the time or patience for old-fashioned community values, or the attention span for anything longer than a sentence.

However, it seems that kids are turning over a new page; only it’s not their Facebook page, it’s in their stamp albums.

The Sydney Youth Stamp Group was formed in 1990, and since then it’s been sparking the interest and imagination of a whole new generation of stamp enthusiasts.

The resurgence of stamp collecting has transformed a quiet, long-standing hobby into a fully-fledged social event engaging many young people.

Co-ordinated by Liz Nakhla, the group holds four workshops a year – one for each of the school breaks – for children aged from seven to 18.

The workshops provide a great opportunity for kids from different areas and ages to make new friends through a shared interest, as well as offering the volunteers who run the classes a chance to pass on a little of their own passion for stamp collecting.

The workshops also strive to teach the kids something about the history and tradition behind the art.

The group divides the workshops into two age groups.

The younger group gains an introduction to collecting, and includes fun activities and games, while the older group investigates the historical curiosities behind a variety of stamps, and is given a helping hand in displaying their collections in different exhibitions.

The Sydney group is only one in a number of loosely affiliated stamp clubs working around the country.

Stephen Morris, co-ordinator of the Newcastle Youth Stamp Club, says one of the biggest goals of the group workshops is to provide a fun and engaging environment for kids who might otherwise be sitting in front of a computer screen instead of sitting in with a friend.

It seems that these goals are certainly being met.

“What usually happens is that once the kids have been coming for a while, the older ones have a bad habit of helping the younger ones,” Stephen says.

“Which is not a bad habit at all. They’re more or less like a big brother or a big sister to the younger ones.”

And it’s this sense of community and friendliness that is something the Sydney Youth Stamp Group is looking to strengthen in the future.

Ultimately, the group aims to get the kids starting up their own smaller stamp clubs in their schools, building on the positive social groups fostered in the workshops.

In both the small groups and the workshops, kids are encouraged to collect by theme, rather than to simply collect anything, which also affords a tremendous sense of individuality to the work.

“We find that the kids stay in it a lot longer that way,” says Stephen

“The future of any hobby, it doesn’t matter what hobby, is in the hands of the young.”

By Nicholas Pond