Well, we are 8½ weeks into a new era – not just for TMC - but for all of the organisations and practitioners that have experienced significant change in their work and funding arrangements in recent months. There’s so much to learn about and navigate in the new landscape, I want to use this update to give our partners a flavour of TMC’s activities and ambitions in the year ahead.
For TMC, the new financial year sees the beginning of our new work with Arts Council England as the Bridge Organisation for the East Midlands (more about what this means below). We also continue a wide range of other partnerships and programmes that help pursue our mission. At the heart of these activities lies our core commitment to helping children and young people develop and apply their creativity through participation in cultural activity. Our priority work themes in TMC – of learning, leadership and enterprise – guide the focus and impact of this work and are creating some exciting new opportunities.
Arts Council England’s stated aim for the Bridge Organisations is to ‘connect young people with great art and culture’, an ambition that we really love. To guide this work in the East Midlands, we have just published the State of Our Region report. Produced in partnership with FOCUS Consulting, the report explores young lives in our region and how they currently connect with cultural activity (read it here: www.themightycreatives.com/page/Our-State-of-the-Region-Report/50). A number of priority areas for action are suggested by the report, and we will be talking more about these over the next few weeks to build our programme. We will also publish research from Dubit, who have helped us look more deeply into individual young lives. This work reveals important lessons about young people’s social and family lives, their passion for learning and refining their cultural skills, and the importance of ensuring effective routes to information and access across such a large rural, urban and coastal region. You can follow our developing bridge activity on Twitter #EMbridge.
Settling into our new role, a priority for me over the coming months is simply to see and learn from our partners’ work in more detail. I am exploring the region’s rich cultural provision for young people and families, meeting some organisations for the first time, and revisiting what others are achieving through their work. It’s a great pleasure to visit, learn and Tweet (@Richard_TMC) as I travel around the East Midlands, and I look forward to more mind-expanding experiences as I go. We have so much to celebrate and so much potential for the future.
In the field of learning, our traded service is currently delivering creative school development consultancy to school clusters across the region, addressing such vital issues as literacy, numeracy and pupil voice. We have also been delivering contracted work with Children’s Centres in North West Leicestershire and with Looked After Children in Nottinghamshire. Drawing from our heritage, and with so much changing in the world of education, this interface continues to be an exciting one and we look forward to reporting new activity as it unfolds.
Looking at leadership, we have started our first ever EU Youth In Action funded project, OurWorld. Building on pilot activity across the region, OurWorld starts with an exchange visit with young people from Central Denmark in July 2012. It then moves to deepen young people’s engagement in social action, by inviting them to identify, make films about and lead action on issues that are important to them in their communities. The European adventure is a new one for us, and we are thrilled with the opportunity.
In the area of enterprise, TMC is continuing to support young people’s socially enterprising activity through the Bank of TMC. We have just received a new set of applications from young entrepreneurs in Leicester and Leicestershire and hope to be announcing our new ‘investments’ before too long. Put simply, the Bank backs great ideas and provides young people with start-up advice, practical and financial support for their new social enterprises. Currently in a pilot phase, we are looking for ways to extend impact across the region. The Bank connects with the work we are doing with RIO (www.realideas.org), promoting the Social Enterprise Qualification across the East Midlands and East of England.
You can find out about these and our other programmes and partnerships – including Somewhereto_ , the Journals Project and Mobile TMC – on our web site: www.themightycreatives.com
I want to end on a heartfelt thank you. As our work has evolved, so has the staffing structure at TMC. Many of you will know that we have been through a significant reorganisation following completion of the Creative Partnerships programme last year. Such work is never easy, and I want to congratulate my Board and every member of Team TMC on the way they have used their creative skills to see the process through. Thank you to everyone – past and present – who has helped TMC secure our position for the future. You can find out about our current team on our web site. We look forward to connecting and working with you.
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