MIDDLE-age is when your broad mind and narrow waist change places, the old joke goes. Certainly if you are ever going to be really radical, it is more likely to be when you are young.

Which is why it is important young people's voices should be heard. Just imagine if the members' benches at the City of York Council had been packed with young people in their late teens and twenties. Would the council then have been so anxious to turn York's historic Eye of York over to the developers? It doesn't seem likely.

Tobias Burckhardt certainly wouldn't have voted in favour of Coppergate II. "I don't think it should be built at all," says the 16-year-old St Peters School sixth-former. "It would make York unnecessarily commercial. We have all the shops in the centre of York, and we've got the developments at Monks Cross and Clifton Moor."

Felicity Johnson agrees. The 17 year old from Heslington, who is in the Upper Sixth at St Peters, believes Coppergate II would be wrong. "Clifford's Tower is so important to York," she says. "It attracts a lot of tourists, but it is also one of the last places in the centre of York where you can just go and be quiet."

It's good to hear young people expressing such forthright views on the city which is their home. All too often the younger generation are dismissed as uncaring and uninterested. Felicity doesn't think that's fair.

"There are some young people who really don't care," she admits. "But I do think in general we just don't have the opportunity to get our point of view across."

That could be about to change.

For decades, the York Civic Trust which has been the defender of York's heritage. Sometimes it has worked hand in hand with the city council. At other times the two have been at loggerheads. But without its constant vigilance, it is very unlikely York would have survived as the city it is today.

Unfortunately, young people have in the past had very little chance for their voice to be heard in the Trust's deliberations. From next week, however, they will be given a voice.

The Young York Civic Trust will be formally launched with an event - hosted by the Lord Mayor, Coun David Horton - at Guildall at 7pm on Tuesday. Its first major event will follow a few days later, on October 10, when members of the new group will join a debate being organised by the - adult - civic trust at the Merchant Adventurers Hall. The motion for discussion? "This house believes that tourism in York has gone far enough."

York Civic Trust chairman Darrell Buttery, whose brainchild the new group is, wrote to every school with a sixth form in York inviting them to encourage teenagers to get involved.

He concedes that initially the 'Young Trust' - open to anyone of Sixth Form age - will be largely educational. During the first year, he hopes to use his contacts to enable teenagers to visit the workshops of artists and sculptors working in the city, to see behind the scenes of the Theatre Royal, to glimpse life in the Bar Convent museum, and to attend a reception at the Mansion House.

But he is also keen for members to begin to play a more active role in protecting the city's heritage. One idea is for young members to consult architects, surveyors and estate agents and come up with ideas for an alternative use for one of the churches in York that could become redundant churches.

Darrell would also like to organise a project looking at the development of the York 'teardrop' - the soon-to-be-developed site in the centre of the city. "It would be wonderful if a small group of photographers could be taken on a guided tour of the site to make a photographic record," he says. "I don't think there has been a photographic record of for example listed buildings there. It would then be exciting if that could be mounted as a small exhibition at the Guildhall."

Eventually, he adds, it may be possible for the group to take on a more active campaigning and lobbying role - although he says it is too early for talk of that yet.

Young group members will certainly be straining at the leash.

"We're another generation," says Leonora Grabiner, a York College sixth former from Micklegate who is another early member of the 'Young Trust'. "We're the ones who will be left when the older people are gone. Young people should be able to express a view which should be considered."

Young York Civic Trust will be

officially launched at Guildhall

at 7pm next Tuesday

Updated: 10:35 Wednesday, September 25, 2002