Runaway - an image from 'Scene & Heard' by student Lucy Farrell
What is the Next Generation? It’s a moment in time to reflect upon what are the ingredients that make good arts in education or arts with young people here in the South West – though blogs as I understand have no geographical boundaries. Why now? Well the Arts Council in their strategic framework for the Arts ‘Achieving Great Art for Everyone’ has highlighted in its Goal Five that ‘Every child and young person has the opportunity to experience the richness of the arts’. Hurrah! So now is the time to highlight some of the great work that is going on in the region and to debate what makes it great and how we can learn from each other. KEAP has tendered to initiate this debate.
Two weeks ago we put out a call for examples of innovative, interesting and inspiring work and my email has been red hot with people nominating projects. They can only be categorised by their huge variety! From a Gold Arts Award student in Camborne Community College creating a piece of theatre about how children in care often carried all their belongings in black plastic bags each time they moved home, when shown to people of influence, this changed local authority policy, to a dance project in Plymouth which started with 6 young dancer leaders and spread to 10,000 participants in Dance Explosion.
This week I have attended a CYMAZ music session in the Methodist hall in my village with young people creating their own reggae surf song for recording on CYMAZ radio, the celebration of ‘Scene and Heard’ a media project we have run with CYMAZ with hard to reach young people exploring issues through photography, cartooning and podcasting for radio. Wednesday am visiting Travelling Light Theatre Company in Bristol and Thursday the BBC Concert Orchestra visit Plymouth to plan their family orchestras for Devon and Cornwall linked to the Cultural Olympiad. A rich mix!
Over the next six weeks we want to hear from you. Please share your thoughts and experiences – you can also add links to project pages, images or film.
It’s now over to you!