Regeneration Yes: a campaign that will not die

Kirsten Thornton, 19, Stirling, student

I'm one of the co-founders of Generation Yes. In November last year, knowing that 16- and 17-year-olds were going to get to vote and that we had to work really quite hard with that age group, five of us set it up. We wanted it to be run by young people for young people. And then it just spiralled from there because we got so much popularity on social media when people realised that this was a youth movement and how exciting it was. It grew at such a rate that I don't think anyone could have expected.

At the moment we haven't got a plan for where we go from here, it's really just lots of ideas. Obviously in the last week we've been trying to get over the result and grieve, but also to spend time working and studying and spending time with our families - everything that was neglected. The only thing that we have agreed on is that we aren't going away any time soon. We're going to fight. We're going to make sure we win this for our generation.

I took part in quite a lot of school debates and college debates representing Generation Yes. A lot of our audience was on Twitter and Facebook, so a lot of our work was online.

If anything we've had more people sign up in the last week than we probably had in the weeks leading up to the vote. We had a huge surge.

People took a few days off to grieve and cry and sleep and then everybody came back fighting. It's the same story with every organisation - everyone seems way more active and determined.

Rhiannon Spear, 23, Glasgow, television researcher

I was one of the original founders of Generation Yes. I'm certainly proud to be able to say I started what I believe has become one of the largest grassroots youth movements Scotland has ever seen. But I think we can't really take credit for how big it became. That was purely down to the people joining and getting involved.

It was very much a Facebook group at first and I think when it first started we didn't expect it to grow to the size it has. But we were young and naive enough to think we could change the world.

I definitely wasn't ready for a No vote. I'd put all my faith in it being a Yes, particularly given all the people I talked to and all the Yes signs in Glasgow. They're still up now.

People aren't ready to accept it was a No. And I think the mood in Generation Yes is that we won't stop until it's a Yes. Literally the day after, we were organising a meeting on how to move forward. We've not stopped. Even if it's not going to be independence for a while, we want to pursue the promises that we thought independence might bring - a fairer, more equal society - from the bottom up, that Common Weal mentality.

I'm a television researcher. I was actually working in London, on a Frankie Boyle show about the referendum, on the Friday, and I left the count at 5am and got on a train at Glasgow Central at 6.30am. The Yes campaign was my life, and so I just convinced myself that it was going to be a Yes. I think it's because I wasn't ready for a No that I turned round so quickly. I thought, 'So, wait a minute, 45% of the population did vote Yes, 1.6 million people. There's still something there. Radical change has to happen.'

I gave all my spare time to the campaign over the last year. My boyfriend, who is from Birmingham, is up visiting me right now and I think he thought it would all be over. But I don't think we're going to let up any time soon.

Saffron Dickson, 16, school student

I come from a family that's pretty political, so I was always pro-CND, anti-war. I went on my first political march when I was six, against the Iraq war. I've always been politically engaged, but more so now. The thing that started my really big involvement in campaigning was the Radical Independence conference and a speech that I did there. I'd been asked to go and speak at it and I was really naive, just turned 16, and I thought it was going to be maybe 100 people, and then it was over 1000. But it made the campaign real for me.

I thought, 'Wow, these 1000 people have got up out of their beds to listen to me speak, a wee lassie.' I thought 'I can repay these people that are so passionate by going out and campaigning', and that's what I did. After that I did canvassing, I ended up doing lots of media stuff and going round and speaking to people.

I've given up nearly every single weekend for the past year and a half of my life and I don't begrudge that at all. And now that we don't have independence I will give up every day, every hour, every weekend, until we get a better, fairer and more democratic society for Scotland. This for me isn't the end of it.

One of the weirdest things was waking up on the Saturday after the campaign. Nobody was doing anything and I was still in bed at 11am, and I'd forgotten what it was like to be a teenager and still in your bed at 11am at the weekend. It kind of set me off crying, because for the last couple of years of my life this had been my life. I was pretty numb on the Friday. I was at the Glasgow count and I think I just cried myself out. On Saturday it broke my heart that I wasn't out campaigning. But I picked myself back up and realised this was just the beginning and so many people had been touched by it, and 45% is a really big victory.

I come from a community that did vote Yes. We see serious deprivation in our side of Pollokshields. It's always the area that's forgotten about because half of it is rich. Our half is so poor. I grew up in terrible housing, with leaks and mould. For the people around me I saw this as a real opportunity. I'm mourning for the futures that could have been. I'm grieving for the futures that were stolen from these children that I see.

We're going to keep going. For us it will be going back to the roots of what's good for Scotland. And if that means campaigning for devo max then that's what we'll do. We're about doing what's best for Scotland and that will always be our aim.

Graeme West, 29, Glasgow, IT worker

I hadn't been involved in youth politics before, but I got involved with Yes Provan, my local Yes campaign, last summer. GenYes came about out of a recognition that the existing youth campaign didn't have a very high profile. Most Yes events in 2012 and 2013 had some kind of youth representation, but often younger voters were treated as another interest or sectoral group.

This led to ghettoisation of the message - talking only about tuition fees and other stereotypical "young person issues". We wanted to create more of a full-spectrum, high-profile campaign that would use social media, traditional campaigning and stunts to create a distinctive voice for young people.

We're planning to continue, so we will be building on the approach we developed in the referendum campaign. What's different about GenYes is that it isn't geared toward any particular demographic of young people. We also do a pretty good job of being appealing to a diverse public. Most of our Facebook fans are female and we've reached out to all kinds of communities over the past few months.

As a Glaswegian I was hoping that my city would break with its recent past and support independence as one of the steps it needs to take to improve the lives of its citizens. I'm really proud that Glasgow delivered. By Friday night after the count we were already intent on continuing in some form. We were brought together by a binary question that opened up the policy space to discuss bigger questions of social justice, inequality, individual autonomy and imagining something better. We'll be talking about the best way to bring that energy, passion and serious political engagement to the urgent issues that Scotland still has.

Miriam Brett, 23, Stirling, campaigner

I came quite late to the idea of independence. I'm half-English and an internationalist and for a long time I was No by default. I hadn't really thought about it. I didn't want to have anything to do with it - I didn't have an SNP background and wouldn't describe myself as nationalist. But I came to see that it's about what kind of government we want to see, where we want decisions to be made, and whose interest we want them to be made in.

I'm working for the Common Weal now, looking at policy research and policy development within the Common Weal framework. I became involved in Generation Yes after the launch. I met everybody there and it just took off from there. I got involved more from then on and started writing for them, and then later became one of the organising team. I've been more busy than anyone could possibly imagine, but it's been fantastic as well. And now, if anything, people are more motivated and energised after this result, ironically. It's been extremely rewarding and interesting and energising.

I was in Stirling at the count and I was in Edinburgh for the Friday after. I cried. The day after, everybody needed to take a bit of breathing space to think about it, and from then on it was just looking at the future and what steps we can take to move forward. On September 20, I helped compose a response from National Collective about where we go from here.

Kieran Donoghue, 27, Ayr, works in visual merchandising

People are now approaching Generation Yes who weren't really involved before the referendum, and who have now got to the stage where they want to get involved. I suppose it's given Scottish politics the chance of a massive reboot.

I dipped in and out of politics before, but it was only with this campaign that I really got involved. In GenYes almost everyone has their own thing that they're passionate about. I work in fashion so I came from a creative way of looking at things. For me, personally, I was one of the GenYes people who thought a bit outside the box.

We succeeded in shifting politics from being what was seen as a boring topic to something that became really exciting and something a lot of people now want to take forward. There are issues, like education and child poverty, that a lot of young people are worried about. They are probably things we will try to tackle.

Now in my local group in Ayr I'm working with a big group of all ages and we're looking at doing food bank collections. As a younger generation, we're not just going to sit down and take it. We have such a strong voice. I know it was claimed this week that Generation Yes was a myth. I can guarantee we're not a myth. We're a definite movement - and something that won't go away.