This paper considers experiences of penal and voluntary-sector interventions in the lives of young people labelled as ‘troubled’ or ‘at risk’ of criminal behaviour. Drawing on data from a case-study conducted in the north of England, this paper focuses on the narratives of young people ‘on the margins’ of society who were involved with a range of community-based interventions, specifically youth clubs, a support group and a mandatory youth justice course. We consider how young people experience and respond to stigmatising elements prevalent in the structured interventions and everyday interactions with the institutions and agencies intended to support them. We argue that ‘promotive’ relationships between young people and the adults working with them enable young people to challenge risk-based identities and navigate the barriers they face.

Alice Munro's 2001 short story ‘The Bear Came Over the Mountain’ and its 2006 film version, Away from Her, directed and adapted for the screen by Sarah Polley, are two interconnected narratives through which diverse (and even divergent) representations of romantic love and memory in later life can be analysed. Even if the two texts are constructed on an apparently simple plot line, which basically depicts the last phase of a 44-year-long marriage once the wife, Fiona, presents symptoms of dementia and is interned in a retirement home, they both allow for, at least, two contrasted interpretations. As will be demonstrated, these two possible readings unveil different cultural, social and psychological facets of memory in connection with late-life expressions of love; and each of them contributes, in their own way, to the construction of a dialogical narrative that mediates between the complexities of old age, dementia and gender difference, while at the same time demonstrating the power of literature and the cinema to reflect and refract the complexities of contemporary forms of ageing.