Next Generation Blog Posts

Article 31 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child that says that children and young people in the UK have a right to high quality arts experiences as an integral part of their childhood and youth.

 Maybe we should send this to Mr Gove and his team to reflect on?

Maybe we need to be more explicit about the benefits?

Key learning dispositions are developed through learning in and about the arts: our curiosity, imagination, creativity, innovation, enquiry, confidence, self-esteem and wellbeing. Qualities such as empathy, playfulness, surprise, ingenuity, sensitivity, flexibility, interpersonal tolerance, problem solving and self-aware learning are nurtured through our experiences in the arts.

5x5x5=creativity is focused on exploring children and young people researching and representing the world together, with adults supporting them. The research is based on a view of all children and young people as creative and competent; the adults see themselves as ‘researching children researching the world’, learning alongside children and young people. Everyone’s worth and their contributions are recognised; everyone’s ideas are heard and supported. Our evidence is that children spontaneously and creatively connect all forms of thinking and expressive representation, demonstrating their use of the ‘hundred languages of children’.  These are life-wide creative skills that can enhance all of our lives.
 
Mr Gove’s call for high standards is not in question – but the quality of teaching depends on developing and supporting creative individuals, both adults and children. Role models in the community including creative professionals can widen expertise and support learning. The relationship between adults and young people is vital to support individual progress and wellbeing, to nurture the disposition to learn and to engage in real and meaningful learning experiences where children and young people take responsibility for their own learning. Please note Mr Gove …

Penny Hay

Ben Dunks – boys dance workshop

We have spent a great deal of time, thought, action and creativity in this country in the last number of years developing and actioning programmes of work that are ‘Youth-led’ or that engage with young people as the primary instigators and facilitators of creative ideas.

My thought is that a great deal of work that describes itself as ‘Youth-led’ actually isn’t. It might be youth participatory, youth-engaged, or youth-got-the-money/ youth-signed-the-funding-application, but the work itself isn’t led by the young people involved. But is this actually possible? Is it truly possible for there to be youth-led work, work that is defined by the young people, implemented by the young people, performed/executed by the young people and evaluated by the young people? If this can happen, is it the best way to get the best results and the best outcomes with the ever decreasing amounts of money available to us?

What is the potential quality of the work that you do that is youth-led? Are you prepared for the possibility that the work might not be what you expected or wanted it to be? How much of yourself is in the work you lead with young people, and do you have and actively apply strategies that disengage yourself with the process, to take yourself out?

I don’t see a lot of work that is actively led by young people, although I am sure it is out there. What I am seeing is artists and practitioners using young people as their canvas or as the tools for their expressive needs while describing their process as youth-led. I think this is an issue and needs discussing and addressing. What do you think?  

Ben Dunks

I have lived near and worked on a housing estate for nearly 40 years. I also taught there for a number of years bringing artists and performers to work there. After leaving teaching, with Rose and Andy Garnett, organised and funded weekly access to the arts for 3000 young people in and out of school.

I would like to share some thoughts:

We appear to have a funding system that goes; the estate has problems, the families and children are a problem, we are worst in that area X, please fund us! Funding is directly attached to problems (or high socio-economic indicators of poverty). Research on Education Action Zones suggests that applications can exaggerate difficulties to attract money. If “regeneration” money is attached to being “bad” why be “good”? Consequently does this suggest a vested interest in maintaining a constant focus on difficulties?

Regardless of constant discussion, funding is still separate, short-term and disjointed. We identified 13 strands of arts funding on the estate, all of which operated independently. Research on the estate by University of the West of England clearly shows the very low expectations we as professionals and parents have, arts organisations also reflect this. It is a standing joke at the pub that we will have more DJ’s than Ibiza. Conversations about “let’s take a great version of Hamlet to the estate” are rare.

There is little discussion or funding that focuses on potential and little mention of the large number of highly successful people born there, from sculptors to nuclear physicists. Yet, work by opera companies, Birmingham Royal Ballet, national orchestras as well as international performers show that the residents and children alike are excited by a wide and demanding cultural diet given the opportunity.

Perhaps its time we all expected more?

Vic Ecclestone

Antony Waller

I’ve had cause to wonder, over the last few months, what it’s all about- meaning, in case you were wondering, creativity, arts and artists projects in schools. If you’ve been involved with Creative Partnerships recently you could be forgiven for thinking the whole point is “school improvement” or “creative teaching and learning” and if you look at the Art Council’s website you might think it’s all about great art and artists, participation and excellence- and lets face it, agree with those sentiments or not, it can all turn into pretty meaningless jargon quite fast.

Now the thing is, when them-who-feel-they-must-organise try to create great and extraordinary projects or events, they have to be paid for, and inevitably, funders have criteria that any project has to meet if you want their money. That, in turn, means that sometimes your idea runs the risk of getting “spun” by the need to meet the “criteria of the day”. I wonder whether anyone stops to check whether the various agendas expressed by all the government sponsored funding programmes are actually expressing values and ideas held by real people/young people/schools/artists- or is it all about what politicians or civil servants or academics think is good for us? Who knows- but that brings me all the way back to what’s it all about- why do we do what we do?

I’m fairly clear about my motivation- my own school experience (in the 60’s- ouch!) was so arid, repetitive and academically driven, and so devoid of any creativity and art that I found I had huge motivation as an adult to make sure that schools and children or young people had access to some fabulously exciting, challenging, interesting projects working with brilliant people who would often wear strange and interesting clothes… And I thought that making dances with kids was the best job anyone could ever have- But that’s just me…and I’m pretty old, frankly…

 So what I’d like to know, or be reminded of, is…young people, schools, art, creativity-why do we do it? Why do we want it? What use is it to us? and critically, what is “it”

 So whether you are 7 or 70, artist or JCB driver, jargon is banned, plain language is essential, controversy is encouraged- your personal views are invited on all the above…What do you think?

Antony Waller

Marazion Tea Treat

Years ago, could be 6, could be 7, not sure  now how many years ago, I was asked by the Headmaster of Polperro school whether I could do a project with the school based on a recording of an old fisherman from the village that he had. He didn’t know what sort of project, just that he wanted to do one and it seemed important. I didn’t know either, but it seemed very important to me too, as Polperro is where I am from, and where all my stories start.

So I asked for some R and D days from the then Creative Partnerships, so that rather than just being re-active, I could devise a proper project for the school, for me, and to honour the fisherman whose voice inspired it.

So I visited the new school, and my old one, now a village hall, wondered around the village, and went to the Polperro museum in the old Pichards works. This museum is a hidden gem, made by the Fisherman, labels stuck up with blue tack, packed full of lives, artefacts and photographs of Puckeys and Joliffs going back generations.

And then I saw myself in the Museum, in an album of old school photographs; there I was 45 years ago. So the idea grew, that wouldn’t it be great to create something with the children about their lives now, so that if they visited the museum in forty years time, they would see them selves and be part of history, but also collect stories from a generation we maybe saying goodbye to.

I then asked my colleague and friend Alessandra Ausenda to be part of the R & D with me, not only is she a fabulous practioner, but she’s half Cornish and half Italian, which seemed appropriate, as Polperro had Italian links through the Pilchard. I remembered Tea Treats as a child, she remembered people writing on table cloths in Rome Café;s, stories, doodles, memories

Together we devised a project based around the museum and the children inviting older Polperrians to a Tea-Treat. The process was too long to describe here. We ate cakes, drew on table cloths, collected stories, made new ones. The Tea Treat itself was without doubt our favourite moment on a project ever.

From that two days R and D, dreaming, devising, planning has come many more Tea Treat projects, each one has been wonderful, we’ve done them together, on our own, with other artists. The concept has been taken on by others, to the point where we have been told about the project by other people who don’t know we started it, at first strange, but on reflection, a homage to the success of it, and to those two days dreaming time.

Who else has had this wonderful and developmental experience, who is desperate for it, or is this just a luxury that can’t now be afforded?

Annamaria Murphy.

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!