Other livesScotland This article is more than 11 years oldObituaryAlan Small obituary
This article is more than 11 years oldMy father, Alan Small, who has died aged 74, was an inspiring figure within the field of education, youth and community work in Scotland. He was an iconoclastic thinker whose career encompassed teaching, inspection, consultancy and mentoring.
Alan was born in Kilmarnock. After studying at Edinburgh University, he worked in Aberdeen, first with vulnerable young people at St Katherine's club and community centre, and then as a teacher at Summerhill secondary school. In 1967-68 he taught in Atlanta, Georgia, and was among the marchers in Martin Luther King's funeral procession.
After a spell teaching community and social work at Moray House, in Edinburgh, he became one of Her Majesty's inspectors of informal further education (now called community learning), a role in which his political nous and absence of fear in confronting problems paid dividends. The Rev John Miller described him as "unnervingly creative", with a talent for raising huge issues in unexpected ways.
In 1980 he visited Fersands, Grampian's poorest community. Expecting a bureaucrat, staff instead met someone totally engaged with the reality of deprivation. His attention to the needs of young people facing difficulties, and his understanding of the issues encountered by those who worked with them, were at the heart of the first major national report by HMI on youth work in Scotland.
He also helped to set up the Scottish Youth Parliament and supported the Foyer Federation, which provides training and accommodation for disadvantaged young people. He chaired Fast Forward, the first national peer education programme, and was vice-chair of YouthLink, and an enthusiastic founder of Young Scot, the national youth information and citizenship charity.
On social occasions, he was a charismatic host, igniting discussion and laughter. From his childhood until last summer, he loved visiting the island of Iona, off the western coast of Scotland. He is survived by his second wife, Mary, and their daughter, Lucy; four sons, Steve, Patrick, Mike, and me, from his first marriage, to Moira; and seven grandchildren.
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