Archived Projects

Next Generation has been an exploration and celebration of the Arts with, by and for young people in the South West Region.   It has all happened very fast and has consisted of a blog which received over 4000 hits in February and March, a list of nominated work and projects from across the region and a series of 6 gatherings in Bath, Salisbury, Dorchester, Langport, Exeter and Truro with artists, arts organisations, teachers, local authority arts officers and councillors. 

The aim was to inspire debate and share best practice and also to look to the future.

• School without Walls – the egg theatre Bath and St Andrews Primary School
• Let’s Dance Change for Life Plymouth Dance Explosion
• Cornwall Young Promoters and Somerset Young Promoters (YAP)
• Cultivating Creativity Beaford Arts Centre and Marland School
• Travelling Light Theatre Company

The sun came out!

Music definitely drove away the rain on Friday evening when Callington Cluster Schools came together for ‘A Right Ol’ Song and Dance’ at Sterts Theatre. Joined by Resonate Strings from the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, and featuring performances from Callington Community College, and Harrowbarrow, St Mellion, Pensilva, St Dominic, Stoke Climsland and Quethiock primaries, the evening was a memorable event.

Loosely themed on a Music Hall performance with a programme of Variety Acts including choirs, a junk band, dancing, circus and the legendary BoomWhaker, and entertained by a Master of Ceremonies and The House Band, this was no ordinary show!

The House Band

The evening began with the Sterts barbeque, and the audience were entertained and a lovely atmosphere created by the Callington Community String Orchestra and the Jazz Band. We were then welcomed by an energetic and rhythmic performance from the Callington Taiko drummers before performances from each of the primary schools, interspersed with The House Band made up of Callington young musicians and Resonate Strings from the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.

Adrian Balletto, Head of Music at Callington Community College said, ‘It is so important for all the pupils to be able to work with professional musicians like Resonate Strings, and to come together to make music together.’

The young musicians from the college and local primary schools have been working with Andy Baker, Nationwide Community Musician from Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra over the last term to create this extravaganza which is part of the Arts Offer from Cornwall Learning delivered by KEAP and is the second strand of the BSO’s activity in Cornwall this year supported by Steel Charitable Trust and The Radcliffe Trust. The primaries produced such a range of performance from improvisation on glockenspiel to George Gershwin, to a flying circus, to Cornish songs in 2 part harmony.

Helen Reynolds from Kernow Education Arts Partnership said, ‘The schools should all be so proud of themselves, and the audience obviously loved the music- it was great when everyone joined in on ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy’ from St Mellion Choir playing tuned BoomWhackers!’

A slideshow of images from the show:

Six hundred Cornish schoolchildren, musicians from the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and a withy giant have created a magical performance at the Eden Project.

 The 21 primary schools came together on Thursday, May 19 to perform the story of Bodelva: The Giant who Helped With Eden, written and narrated by Angie Butler with music by Peter Bone.

 It was organised by Cornwall Learning Music, Resonate from the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and Kernow Education Arts Partnership.

 The children began with a procession to the Eden Arena led by a willow giant created by Lanlivery County Primary School and artist Reg Payn.

 Sam Kendall, Eden’s school programme manager, said: “It was a spectacular scene with all the children waving their school banners, singing the giant’s song, and playing their cellos, violins, ukuleles and guitars. Everyone loved the performance.”

 Cornwall Learning Music teachers worked with the children through their Wider Opportunities music lessons to create the musical event.

Andy Baker, the BSO’s nationwide community musician, said: “None of these children have been learning their instruments for more than a year, and the performance they have given is just incredible. So much hard work has gone into this.”

BSO 'Resonate' string quintet

Karen Frost, string team leader from Cornwall Music Service said: “We have had so much fun with this project. The opportunity for the children to play in this venue, on this scale, with all these great musicians will inspire them to keep playing music.”

 Schools performing were: Gorran, Tregony, Duloe, Lanlivery, Liskeard Hillfort, Tregadillett, St Day & Carharrack, Newlyn, Nancledra, Werrington, Launceston, Goonhavern, St. Minver, Boscastle, St Teath, St Breward, Egloskerry, Kea, St Issy, Kehelland and Calstock.

This project is part of the Arts Offer to schools from Cornwall Learning, delivered by KEAP, and represents the second year of a partnership with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in Cornwall supported by the Steel Charitable Trust and The Radcliffe Trust.

All images Sean Hurlock

Since September 2008 KEAP has been the local delivery partner for the Arts Award in Cornwall. We are very excited about this role because it gives us the chance to shout about it! What do we want to shout about?

The Arts Award is a wonderful mechanism for young people to really explore something they are interested in within a broad range of arts – to do it, teach it, experience it, market it, research it. It encourages independent learning and real understanding of arts and culture both locally and nationally. The Award is delivered at Bronze, Silver and Gold levels and is aimed at young people from 11 – 25. This role also involves us in training of advisers and of coordinating network events for young people and advisers.

For more information visit www.artsaward.org.uk

A few statistics to give a sense of scale: since the launch in 2005, 30,780 young people have registered to take part in an Arts Award in England, 991 of those are in Cornwall. So far, 12,724 Arts Awards have been achieved nationally. There are 250 Arts Award centres (schools, youth groups, and arts organisations delivering the Arts Award to young people) in the south west, 41 of those are in Cornwall. Below are some case studies of how different Arts Award Centres approach the delivery of the Award.

Mullion School

Students have been involved with the Arts Award from its very beginning taking on a wide range of projects including African Drumming, marketing Kneehigh, promoting Screen Actions, putting on their own exhibition at the Exchange Gallery Penzance, producing documentaries and trailers and transforming a bare playground wall into a work of art. The scheme is open to any and every interested student, and runs in a variety of ways – in lessons, out of school, as individuals and in groups.

Staff and students in the Art Department were keen to build on existing links with St Martin Primary School – what better way to gain a Bronze Arts Award? The research to makeover the playground wall began with visits to Newquay Zoo, Tate St Ives and Barbara Hepworth’s Garden where, as well as looking at the animals, admiring the artwork and eating ice cream, the group found inspiration particularly with the use of shade, contrast and camouflage in nature. Pictures taken, comments added and they’d explored the arts as audience members – Part B of the Award completed. The volunteers then went on to research the life and work of Henri Rousseau and of the two artists working with them on the project, Dee Hall and Joe Rainbow. And that completed Part C: Arts Heroes and Heroines. For the next stage, Part D: the Arts Apprenticeship, eleven 15 year olds took a class of six year olds teaching them to design and draw templates of leaves and flowers which they later incorporated in the final design. All that remained was Part A where young people explore the arts as participants. Ideas thrashed out, a final design created and the wall finished — no thanks to the rain which might have helped in preparing the surface but on more than one occasion succeeded in washing our artistic efforts down the wall, across the playground and ultimately down the drain!

Having achieved his Bronze Award working in film in English lessons, Tom Gaby felt ready to take on the bigger challenge of Silver Level and volunteered to produce the trailer and documentary for this year’s Screen Actions. Tom played a leading part in the organisation of the Festival as well as directing the film team. The project gave him the opportunity to work with a number of artists whilst acquiring the skills needed to produce two pieces of film distributed countywide.
Jackie Matthews

Carefree

Carefree is a voluntary organisation working with young people in care. We aim to help young people gain the skills they need as they approach independence, and have a strong focus on volunteering and supporting others through our ‘peer mentoring’ and ‘arts leaders’ schemes.

Carefree has been working with the arts for the past three years. We ‘fell’ into doing things around the arts because some of the young people using our project were so keen to do creative things. These young people literally mentored their peers and gave them the confidence to become more creative and we have learnt that arts work is a fantastic way of working with young people. Learning to express yourself creatively is an important skill for any young person. For a young person in care it can be invaluable. Art and creativity can help a young person make sense not just of the film, sculpture or song they are working on at the time but give meaning and shape to other things in their life so that those things become manageable.

Our work with the Arts Award has meant we have helped in a small way to buck the trend for young people who may not get any other qualifications, or do significantly less well than their peers at GCSE. K undertook her Bronze award with us. She worked with a group to make a 3 minute film short and wrote most of the script herself; she attended a young women’s music week and learnt to play instruments and wrote a song; she researched her arts hero – Dreadlock Alien, a care-experienced Rap poet from Birmingham – and she attended a theatre production for the first time in her life. K’s example is not unique. Many young people in the care system have found ways of expressing themselves, and their lives, through undertaking the Arts Award with us. The qualification at the end is the icing on the cake.
Mari Eggins

Launceston College gains help from… the Methodist Church?

At Launceston College the Arts Award has recently been re-launched by Expressive Arts Coordinator Alastair Stevens with superb leadership by Tim Aldridge who has been placed in the community as a Methodist Youth
pastor! Tim wanted to help the local school; he had full a CRB check and has experience of performance, recording and theology. This approach has attracted new Arts Award candidates from all age groups, provided support for the teaching staff and inspired the young people to try out new skills, meeting for support on Wednesday lunchtimes and after school. Two Arts Award advisors under one roof but providing a very broad base of experience and personal skills. Launceston College and the community are delighted that such an unlikely yet innovative approach is working so well.
Alastair Stevens

This programme of work has been commissioned by Cornwall Arts Partnership with match funding from Creative Partnerships and is being delivered by KEAP, Creative Partnerships and The Works with KEAP having the overall management.

The aim of the programme is to ensure that the Arts are firmly embedded into the Extended Services offer and that networks understand potential offered by the arts and creative sector, help them to develop partnerships and know where to go to make contact, links and find information.

The programme is now in its second phase and is delivered through 3 strands- Support, Information & Signposting, Training, & Action Research.

The independent evaluation from phase one can be downloaded here:

To download the full evaluation report click here.

To download the Executive Summary & Case Studies only click here.

Support, Information and Signposting

KEAP is an Arts Education Partnership (one of 9 across the SW) and is a passionate advocate for arts and creativity in education and encourages dynamic partnerships between teachers and creative practitioners. We provide information, support and guidance; advise schools on working with artists of all disciplines; and support artists and arts organisations in developing their education work. KEAP is involved with various programmes of work from Early Years to Gifted and Talented, both in and out of school, and across networks of teachers and organisations.

KEAP is meeting with all the extended services network co-ordinators to flag up its services and to ensure they have the resources for programming arts activities, such linking them up with creative practitioners and arts partners and making them aware of opportunities from the arts sector. KEAP has an extensive database of artists working in education across every art form and has excellent relationships with many arts organisations across Cornwall.

We also want to get a picture of the support network coordinators need from the Arts Sector to deliver on their ambitions.

Training

KEAP is building on the Training for After School Art Clubs, currently piloted in primary schools around Falmouth, Penryn and Redruth, to include artists from other disciplines and in other geographical areas. This training aims to equip practitioners with the skills to undertake work in primary schools in line with the needs of the extended schools programme and create a network of local artists as a resource for the school.

This programme is also linked with the Creative Partnerships Cultivate Programme which is exploring how to build cultural capacity from a grass roots level in N & SE Cornwall.
It also has strong links with the Youth Arts Partnership and the development of a Youth Arts Offer for Cornwall.

Action Research

The Action Research part of this programme focuses on young people and how they can shape and take a lead in their extended services offer. It moves on a step from art form specific clubs, and involves interesting projects which strengthen young people’s involvement in their community. There will be one project in each district and all are at early stages of development and activity is likely to be in the autumn term.

Over the past few months children in the ten schools on The Lizard have been working together to create a new musical composition which was performed at The Eden Project on May 20th. Read the full entry and comment »

Just a Girl – Image by young photographer Rhiannon Allex

Kernow Education Arts Partnership and CYMAZ have succeeded in winning Big Mediabox Contract funding of £40,000 to support disadvantaged young people in Cornwall use media to tell their stories or highlight the issues that are important to them. The project is called ‘Scene and Heard’

Working with young people from Pencalenick Special School in Truro, The House Youth Centre in St Austell, Treviglas Community College in Newquay and Caradon Short Stay School in Liskeard, Scene and Heard uses Media Professionals in radio, comic strip and digital photography to up skill and support the young people to manage and deliver their own photography, podcast and graphic novel projects and help them make sure their voices are heard in their local communities and beyond.

Mediabox is a fund that offers disadvantaged 13-19 year the opportunity to create their own media projects. It enables young people to gain new skills, express themselves and get their voices heard. KEAP and CYMAZ have a long history of working with young people in Cornwall in and out of school through arts and culture and have teamed up to deliver this project which is one of only 8 contracts awarded nationally, with 3 in the South West.

Jade & Chelsea's photography project

After 6 months of hard work, on 15^th February 2011, Stuart House in Liskeard came alive with young people and an exhibition of their photography, cartoon and podcasting projects. More than 30 young people and their supporting workers from across Cornwall came together to see their work displayed in an elegant 16^th century setting. The celebration event marked the end of the project and was a chance to share the work, ideas and voices of the young people involved. Each participant was successful in winning bursary money to carry out a media project on a topic important to them. From a radio play about autism to photography projects about emotions and teen issues and a book about the eco town in the Clays, all work was produced to a very high standard. Participants were supported by industry professionals to help them develop skills and were able to use bursary money to have their work professionally printed. A teacher involved in supporting young people said this is a ‘terrific project which the students enjoyed greatly’. Another supporting adult at the event said that it was ‘so impressive! Touching, informative and really interesting. Very well done!’ A participant said ‘It’s helped me develop ideas and learn more skills within drawing and media’ while another said ‘It’s taught me to work in teams. It’s brilliant’.

Olivia, Isaac and Jess at the Scene and Heard showcase

The posters, booklets, podcasts and images are going to be distributed to schools, youth and community settings and other relevant agencies across Cornwall to ensure that the voice and excellent work of the participants is far reaching.