The young people participating in the Journals project at UKYA10. In case you missed it, TMC worked with Architects of Air and Citizen’s Eye to create a one of a kind blogging station at the UK Artists Event in Derby. As part of our Big Lottery and Renaissance East Midlands funded 2009-12 Journals Project, we wanted to engage a younger audience in the inaugural event (a showcase for young artistic talent, 18-35). The Journals Project helps young people document their views and experiences of the Cultural Olympiad in the run up to London 2012. The journals they create will be deposited in the region’s archive offices, a permanently accessible account of these important events.
Having the stunning, inflatable Luminarium serve as base camp for our Journals residency (see here) really added to the status of the young bloggers, giving them a prime location from which they could capture, record and disseminate their Journals. There just wasn’t enough bandwidth to keep them going! And they really benefited from their ‘access all areas’ passes too - Terry Shave, Chair of the UK Young Artists Board gave the project a fabulous name-check in his opening remarks on launch night after his encounter with a young journalist - thanks Terry! We look forward to working with you again on future events.
UKYA is an event close to our hearts as it aims to celebrate and extend young talent. On launch night, Calum Stewart gave an impressive performance on the wooden flute, illustrating how traditional and contemporary sensibilities can combine through stunning technique. A thrilling start to an astonishing few days of art and ambition. Congratulations to everyone involved. Next stop – World Young Artists in 2012.
More information about the Journals Project is available at http://www.themightycreatives.com/journals
Welcome to The Mighty Creatives (TMC) blog. A space to share, celebrate and explore.
Monday 25 October 2010
Thursday 21 October 2010
What can we create together?
Juggling known unknowns
Today’s Comprehensive Spending Review announcement has clearly been difficult for the arts and culture, but perhaps not disastrous. What remains to be seen is how the government’s funding priorities will now be implemented by Arts Council England and others. I hope we can focus on how best to engage children and young people with the arts in ways that draw maximum benefit for them and for others. In preserving the ‘front-line arts’ (an ambiguous term…), let’s be rigorous about what works and set the climate for new opportunities rather than pared-down old ones.We won’t know the full implications of the spending review for TMC’s programmes for a while to come. It is still our ambition to complete the current Creative Partnerships school year in wonderful style. We also aim to launch new services that meet the needs of a new generation of creative children and young people.
My default question looking forward is a simple one: what can we create together?
Today’s Comprehensive Spending Review announcement has clearly been difficult for the arts and culture, but perhaps not disastrous. What remains to be seen is how the government’s funding priorities will now be implemented by Arts Council England and others. I hope we can focus on how best to engage children and young people with the arts in ways that draw maximum benefit for them and for others. In preserving the ‘front-line arts’ (an ambiguous term…), let’s be rigorous about what works and set the climate for new opportunities rather than pared-down old ones.We won’t know the full implications of the spending review for TMC’s programmes for a while to come. It is still our ambition to complete the current Creative Partnerships school year in wonderful style. We also aim to launch new services that meet the needs of a new generation of creative children and young people.
My default question looking forward is a simple one: what can we create together?
Monday 18 October 2010
Awards season beckons!
Be Mighty Be Creative Awards 2010
We’ve just launched our Be Mighty Be Creative Awards for schools who have participated in the Creative Partnerships programme in the East Midlands. As we debate the meaning of Big Society, there can be no better time to show how children and young people have been using their creativity to transform front-line services.
We’re looking for groups of children and young people who have worked creatively with each other and with adults to deliver new approaches to learning that have really made an impact. 9 teams of children and young people will get the opportunity to have a film made about their work and receive £500 to share their achievements with other schools. More information about this exciting opportunity can be found on TMC’s web site: www.themightycreatives.com.
We’ll announce the winners later in 2010 and host a gala screening of the winning films towards the end of the school year.
Children and Young People Now Awards 2010
... whilst I’m talking about awards, I want to share my excitement for TMC’s very own nomination. The Creative Partnerships project “Filling Buckets and Lighting Fires” developed by Eyres Monsell & Gilmorton Children's Centre and Saffron Sure Start Centre has been nominated for the Children and Young People Now Early Years Award. This award recognises “the initiative that has done the most to improve the life chances of babies and young children, especially among disadvantaged or hard-to-reach communities”.
It’s time to dust off our finery and head down to London for a glittering awards ceremony in late November.... Let me dispense with any false modesty – I really want the project to win! Not so much for TMC, but to celebrate the commitment schools and children centres working with the Creative Partnerships programme in the East Midlands since 2002 have made to giving young people the very best start in life. Keep your fingers crossed. Only 7 more weeks...
We’ve just launched our Be Mighty Be Creative Awards for schools who have participated in the Creative Partnerships programme in the East Midlands. As we debate the meaning of Big Society, there can be no better time to show how children and young people have been using their creativity to transform front-line services.
We’re looking for groups of children and young people who have worked creatively with each other and with adults to deliver new approaches to learning that have really made an impact. 9 teams of children and young people will get the opportunity to have a film made about their work and receive £500 to share their achievements with other schools. More information about this exciting opportunity can be found on TMC’s web site: www.themightycreatives.com.
We’ll announce the winners later in 2010 and host a gala screening of the winning films towards the end of the school year.
Children and Young People Now Awards 2010
... whilst I’m talking about awards, I want to share my excitement for TMC’s very own nomination. The Creative Partnerships project “Filling Buckets and Lighting Fires” developed by Eyres Monsell & Gilmorton Children's Centre and Saffron Sure Start Centre has been nominated for the Children and Young People Now Early Years Award. This award recognises “the initiative that has done the most to improve the life chances of babies and young children, especially among disadvantaged or hard-to-reach communities”.
It’s time to dust off our finery and head down to London for a glittering awards ceremony in late November.... Let me dispense with any false modesty – I really want the project to win! Not so much for TMC, but to celebrate the commitment schools and children centres working with the Creative Partnerships programme in the East Midlands since 2002 have made to giving young people the very best start in life. Keep your fingers crossed. Only 7 more weeks...
Reaching beyond the stars...
Last week (4/10/10) I presented at the Museums Association conference in Manchester as part of a panel session called ‘The Republic of Museums’ chaired by Tim Desmond from the Galleries of Justice in Nottingham. The theme of our session was partnerships in the new funding and policy era. I spoke about the opportunity and challenge of working with children and young people as partners in service reform and transformation. My key idea being that only by working collaboratively with each other and with young people will we be able to extend the benefits of the arts, creativity and culture to those young people who might currently be missing out. Foremost in my mind were the recent Taking Part Survey results which clearly identify a drop-off in cultural participation post compulsory school age, and research commissioned for the Find Your Talent programme which paints a picture of a long-standing failure to extend and sustain demand for culture beyond moderately affluent, already engaged communities.
These perspectives were reinforced the next day (5/10/10) at a session organised by CCE for their Young Facilitators, young people from across the country who helped drive the Tell Us Bus survey – a roaming, national review of young people’s opinions about culture. I won’t disclose their key findings here (a full report will come from CCE later in the year) but the young people involved (including three from the East Midlands) were inspirational in their collaborative skills, depth of commitment and insight.
All of these voices give rise to one clear but challenging conundrum: how can we ensure more children and young people have access to the benefits of culture? As our new government focuses on narrowing the attainment gap, it seems to me more important than ever that we put the benefits of culture more in the hands of more children and young people, particularly those with little prior experience of it. In an economic era of ‘something’ rather than ‘plenty’, we will need innovative partnership that help create and extend this offer, focusing first and foremost on the benefits to young people and their communities: but how?
Young people at the Tell Us Bus survey consultation spoke plainly about the need to invest in the existing and more accessible (to them) infrastructure of youth and community settings rather than ‘glittering’ new buildings that they find hard to get to, prohibitively expensive and imposing. This suggests an important departure from past cultural policy – where flagships were everything.
Now, local is everything: public services in the hands of those that use, and increasingly, create them. The cultural sector in the East Midlands is incredibly well suited to this task (given the right resources...), with a huge number of small organisations and individual practitioners spread over our considerable geography. Engaging with communities of greatest need in a sustainable way and producing compelling evidence of how the ‘gap’ is narrowed by culture will be some of the challenges here. But we must also ensure children have the opportunity to take part in culture on a variety of scales: the local, the regional, national and international, the intimate as well as the spectacular. Culture should help reveal new horizons and opportunities, not keep our eyes focused on the doorstep. In that sense, we need to work collaboratively with larger scale providers to connect the local with the national in a way that extends the fine-grain of regular interaction as well as the larger initiative-driven ‘moments’ of the past.
So, how do we find the new partnerships (rather than new government funded programmes....) that allow us to innovate, to extend demand and break long-standing barriers to participation? I have a sense that we – as the cultural sector – are part of the problem (running the risk of repeatedly selling our own wares....), which is why partnership working with children and young people – as co-creators of a new era of access and opportunity – appears an even more compelling solution.
But what are we offering? Another suggestion from the Tell Us Bus facilitators was the idea that yes, culture needs defining so that young people understand what the opportunities are, but that it then needs unleashing so that a wide variety of activities can be explored, driven by the user or creator. Here, culture, sport and recreational activities merge for young people in a way that focuses on what they want – great places to grow up – rather than what they are doing.
Perhaps this is what Tim meant by his Republic of Museums – a new approach to cultural provision that breaks down barriers and creates new, better integrated offers? This would certainly be hugely valuable, but I wonder if it goes far enough? With the inevitable reduction in funds, perhaps the ‘republic’ needs to be drawn more broadly, bringing together partners and providers with a variety of skills from a range of contexts that help create the great places?
What is clear is that as the culture sector prepares to ride the waves of next week’s comprehensive spending review, the old ways of thinking simply aren’t possible. As TMC builds new programmes with, by and for children and young people, we are looking for new opportunities with known as well as new partners. If you relish the new, have the ambition to do things differently, and want to create new opportunities, we would love to hear from you.
These perspectives were reinforced the next day (5/10/10) at a session organised by CCE for their Young Facilitators, young people from across the country who helped drive the Tell Us Bus survey – a roaming, national review of young people’s opinions about culture. I won’t disclose their key findings here (a full report will come from CCE later in the year) but the young people involved (including three from the East Midlands) were inspirational in their collaborative skills, depth of commitment and insight.
All of these voices give rise to one clear but challenging conundrum: how can we ensure more children and young people have access to the benefits of culture? As our new government focuses on narrowing the attainment gap, it seems to me more important than ever that we put the benefits of culture more in the hands of more children and young people, particularly those with little prior experience of it. In an economic era of ‘something’ rather than ‘plenty’, we will need innovative partnership that help create and extend this offer, focusing first and foremost on the benefits to young people and their communities: but how?
Young people at the Tell Us Bus survey consultation spoke plainly about the need to invest in the existing and more accessible (to them) infrastructure of youth and community settings rather than ‘glittering’ new buildings that they find hard to get to, prohibitively expensive and imposing. This suggests an important departure from past cultural policy – where flagships were everything.
Now, local is everything: public services in the hands of those that use, and increasingly, create them. The cultural sector in the East Midlands is incredibly well suited to this task (given the right resources...), with a huge number of small organisations and individual practitioners spread over our considerable geography. Engaging with communities of greatest need in a sustainable way and producing compelling evidence of how the ‘gap’ is narrowed by culture will be some of the challenges here. But we must also ensure children have the opportunity to take part in culture on a variety of scales: the local, the regional, national and international, the intimate as well as the spectacular. Culture should help reveal new horizons and opportunities, not keep our eyes focused on the doorstep. In that sense, we need to work collaboratively with larger scale providers to connect the local with the national in a way that extends the fine-grain of regular interaction as well as the larger initiative-driven ‘moments’ of the past.
So, how do we find the new partnerships (rather than new government funded programmes....) that allow us to innovate, to extend demand and break long-standing barriers to participation? I have a sense that we – as the cultural sector – are part of the problem (running the risk of repeatedly selling our own wares....), which is why partnership working with children and young people – as co-creators of a new era of access and opportunity – appears an even more compelling solution.
But what are we offering? Another suggestion from the Tell Us Bus facilitators was the idea that yes, culture needs defining so that young people understand what the opportunities are, but that it then needs unleashing so that a wide variety of activities can be explored, driven by the user or creator. Here, culture, sport and recreational activities merge for young people in a way that focuses on what they want – great places to grow up – rather than what they are doing.
Perhaps this is what Tim meant by his Republic of Museums – a new approach to cultural provision that breaks down barriers and creates new, better integrated offers? This would certainly be hugely valuable, but I wonder if it goes far enough? With the inevitable reduction in funds, perhaps the ‘republic’ needs to be drawn more broadly, bringing together partners and providers with a variety of skills from a range of contexts that help create the great places?
What is clear is that as the culture sector prepares to ride the waves of next week’s comprehensive spending review, the old ways of thinking simply aren’t possible. As TMC builds new programmes with, by and for children and young people, we are looking for new opportunities with known as well as new partners. If you relish the new, have the ambition to do things differently, and want to create new opportunities, we would love to hear from you.
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