What's happening? Next steps for The Bank of TMC.

The last three months or so have been a really key period in the development of The Bank. We've been able to:

• support to our first 5 social enterprises to complete their business planning, register their new businesses and start trading
• raise the quality of our business development support, communications and marketing, by bringing on board new delivery partners
• extend our work with our Mighty Teams of young advocates and young investors 
• adapt our 'offer' and build our networks to work with young people who are not in education, employment or training, or who are at risk of being so
• work with consultants to create our 'case for support' to attract donors and philanthropists to support the Bank
• complete our plans for the wider 'roll-out' of The Bank of TMC in 2012

Central to this progress has been our new partnership working, which has enabled us to focus on the quality of our programme, particularly as it relates to the business development and mentoring offered to young social entrepreneurs. We've worked closely with Kate Cowan from Spring to Action to devise the bespoke programme of development, support, mentoring, training and inspiration that will be available to our new cohort of young entrepreneurs from March 2012.

In addition, we have also brought on board Louisa Day from digital communications agency Herdl and freelance whizz Adil Jaffer to collaborate with our team of young advocates on a new suite of marketing tools that will help The Bank 'speak' directly to our different target audiences - inspiring young people to get involved; explaining the benefits and possibilities to teachers, youth workers, parents, community activists, volunteers and all the other people in Leicester Shire we need to reach.

Our 'Ideas Generation' strand taking place in February, will give us the chance to test the thinking behind our revised programme of support, working with young people who are NEET and the agencies who support them including Connexions and Youth Offending / Probation Teams.

January and February will see the interim reports from our first group of young social entrepreneurs - their chance to let us know how their businesses are making money, empowering people and communities and trading responsibly.

Between now and March, the team will continue to develop our work on fundraising and promoting our offer, with a particular focus on how we can extend our collaborative work with the Mighty Teams of young people that help lead the Bank of TMC and inspire their peers. While there is much to be done and many challenges coming our way through austerity and general down-heartedness, we feel that we can continue to make a positive difference for and with young people.

2012 blog post from TMC Chief Executive

There are many blogs from Chief Executives at the start of 2012. They assess the world of children and young people, the social and economic challenges facing the country and opportunities in the year ahead. I want to focus a little closer to home, looking at what we have achieved in our first 3 years of being The Mighty Creatives and to look at what’s coming next.

Starting in 2009, we secured responsibility for Creative Partnerships in the East Midlands and rapidly developed a rich portfolio of additional programmes with the MLA, Big Lottery and other funders. This broad and ambitious body of work has given TMC and our partners the opportunity to engage with:

• Over 75,000 children and young people
• Over 350 schools
• Over 5,300 families/parents
• Over 4,500 teachers/creative practitioners
• Over 1,100 participants from community groups

[Source: “Evaluation of The Mighty Creatives”, November 2011, FOCUS]

As many of you will be aware, Creative Partnerships came to an end in the Autumn of 2011, concluding £6.9m of investment in the region’s schools and creative economy between 2009 and 2012. At our recent “Creative & Connected” open space event in Derby, delegates asked the question: “Was Creative Partnerships worth it?” The answer appears to be: “Creative Partnerships was definitely worth it! But we collectively want to ensure that the legacy is accessible and the knowledge and learning is not lost.” Now that we have undertaken the complex task of closing this world-leading programme, we will turn our focus on its legacy, evidence and impact.
But we have needed to secure and change TMC first.

In 2011, we were successful in securing Arts Council England’s new Bridge role, joining Arts Council’s national portfolio to help meet its goal of ensuring every child and young person has the opportunity to experience the richness of the arts and culture. Starting on 1st April 2012, we will work with artists, arts and cultural organisations to help develop their work with children and young people to ensure more children and young people experience the benefits of the arts. In order to get ready for this position, we have worked with Arts Council and our development partners, Arts Learning East Midlands, to agree what needs to be done. We have also needed to restructure our organisation, resulting in a number of loved and valued colleagues leaving TMC in 2012.

Preparation for the Bridge starts now with a period of fact-finding, intelligence gathering and analysis about the state of the arts in the region and what the priorities should be for enabling broader, deeper and higher quality access for more children and young people. Karen Birch will be leading this work as our new Programme Director and will be communicating with our partners very soon about these initiatives and opportunities.

Alongside our Bridge building work, TMC will also pursue Planet TMC, our business strategy focused on young people’s creativity in all its forms. 2012 will see us making a significant contribution to the Cultural Olympiad through somewhereto_, Journals, Big Dance, Dress the World and WEYA. We will also advocate for young people’s participation in enterprise through our work on the Bank of TMC, provide vocational training through Mobile TMC and promote the new Social Enterprise Qualification. Our work with learning settings continues through collaboration with a number of school clusters across the region and the direct delivery of services in Nottinghamshire and Northwest Leicestershire. And our commitment to empowering young people to make positive change happen strengthens through the launch of our MyWorld platform and associated leadership programmes.

If we had a New Year’s resolution, it would be twofold: to help more children and young people influence our organisation; and, to establish stronger collaborations with our many partners in the region and beyond. Despite the challenges around us, our combined passions can deliver even greater results for children and young people in 2012. And that isn’t a bad way to start the year.











Richard Clark
Chief Executive, The Mighty Creatives

Takeover Day 2011 at The Mighty Creatives

Three young people joined TMC on 11.11.11 in our second year of Takeover Day. Takeover Day gives children and young people the chance to work with adults for the day and be involved in decision-making.



Children benefit from the opportunity to experience the world of work and make their voices heard, while adults and organisations gain a fresh perspective on what they do.

This year ...
Ben Kingston (Participation Manager) has been taken over by Anas Mohamed aged 13 years who attends Rushey Mead School

Sophie Baczynski (Programme Coordinator) has been taken over by Barnaby Nyombi aged 13 years who attends Lancaster School

AD Durnin (Project Manager) has been taken over by Zara Akram aged 14 years who attends Madani High School

See how they've got on below:
Hello my name is Anas Mohamed and I’m here for takeover day. Takeover day is a chance for young people to take over an adults job. For example I will be taking over Ben Kingston Hughes job for the day and he is a participation manager at the mighty creative also known as the TMC. My day started of by meeting two friendly people Manisha and Sophie. They introduced us to the peoples jobs we were going to take over and filling us in on what we are going to be doing today. They took us upstairs and introduced us to Ben and AD. Ben was who I was going to be for the day. Ben has a really cool job, his job is that young people get involved in the mighty creative work and the work of others. Manisha and Sophie gave us Ipads that were just delivered so we could open them up and put covers on them. After that we were shown around the office and we were shown our desks and our computers. We were introduced to jass from rare, she is a graphic designer and she wanted our opinion on a web page she is coming back and if it is liked then she will so I hope I it is successful. We went to the old library on belvior street which is now an adult education centre and a photograph gallery. The pictures were great but there was an amazing sand sculpture which was very fascinating. We just had lunch which was very belly bursting and met the rest of the workers and im just going to watch a storyteller which is apparently brilliant. I would like to thank the team TMC and this brilliant opportunity. :P

Hi, I am Barnaby Nyombi and I am on the takeover day 2011.I have taken over Sophie’s Job and right now I have just had lunch. The day so far has been great. Everyone has been really friendly since the moment I got here. First when we were designing the new Journal website for ‘The Mighty Creative centre’ there was lots of ideas and now I am waiting to see if our plans our successful and will look right for the final cut. When we went to the Library it was very interesting and the art was just amazing. From the sand made sculptures to the photography of the trained Leicester mercury photos. We were interviewed by three other takeover people, my one’s name was Thaisle. For lunch we had Domino’s pizza. Nearly all of it was gone by the end as it was very nice pizza. Now I am just writing this blog, waiting to see our website ideas put into a design, I hope it turned out ok, as so far, it has been a good day. ;)

Hi my name is Zara Akram, today I have been taking over the Journals and the mobile TMC. Today has been pretty amazing because there have been many activities going on for example we were able to create our own web page which I was fascinated by, we also went to the old central library which was really great, when we were there we had been interviewed by other students who were doing takeover day, they asked some interesting questions about what we would get out of this experience, why we chose this specific job to takeover and how this job will help me . After today I hope to build my confidence, become a bit more understanding of the other different roles s which will help me in the future. I have really enjoyed taking over Journals and the mobile TMC because it is different and I am glad that I am working here for the day.

Listen to them share their day at:

http://www.ipadio.com/phlogs/JohnCoster/2011/11/11/Takeover-Day-Leicester

Arushi finds somewhereto_ curate

Arushi Patel, TMC's enterprise assistant work placement, unlocked Pedestrian Arts Gallery as a somewhereto_ curate.


The fine art graduate curated a young people's somewhereto_ exhibition called 'Our Voices'.


The collaborative exhibiton aims to raise questions around the notion of student voice. Young people from Leicester have produced the beautiful artwork which will spur on conversations about the positive and negative experiences with student voice.


Arushi, who will be staying with TMC until she jets off on her travels in February 2012, said, "After 3 years of not doing anything with a canvas, it was quite the learning curve putting up five canvas' in a day! I really enjoyed being back in the arts environment and the space looks good which is most important!"



The artwork is produced by Merdeka French, Dev Navekar, Shiv Navekar, Arjun Parmar, Dipesh Parmar, Vivek Patel, Kimberley Symmons.
Photography by Sophie Lewis.

Find out more about somewhereto_

TMC and Lincolnshire One leadership residential

Ten young people will join The Mighty Creatives on Sunday (October 23) for the first leadership residential in partnership with Lincolnshire One at Priory Academy LSST.

The 14 to 18 year-old young people will learn team building, leadership skills and festival programming and management and take part in practical digital art workshops.


There will also be the opportunity for the young people to enjoy the Frequency Festival with access all areas pass for the duration of the festival October 21-29.

Lincolnshire One identified a need for young people to become more involved in collaboration and key decision-making for the county arts sector and has obtained funding to offer this leadership and skills development programme in partnership with TMC.



Following the residential young people will be offered the opportunity to access a mentor from the arts and cultural industries who will be happy to offer advice, guidance and, possibly, access to volunteering or apprenticeships.



During the residential participants and TMC will be tweeting about they are getting up too and photos and films will be uploaded to the Be Mighty Be Creative blog after the event.

Prime Minister applauds somewhereto_

Prime Minister, David Cameron, hopes to inspire more businesses to open spaces for young people after unlocking No.10 for young people to free run, perform and practice boxing.


Inspired by the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, somewhereto_ is a nationwide project to help young people find the space they need to do the things they love, within sport, culture and the arts.


 
 
You'll find out more about this story on the TMC website.