Over 60 people attended the Northern Big Link Up Event held in Leeds yesterday (23/11/2010).

CapeUK invited cultural, creative and educational leaders from across the region and beyond to the Northern Big Link Up Event, which was one of the Cultural Learning Alliance (CLA) ambitious platform of events to highlight the importance of all children and young people having meaningful access to culture in this difficult economic climate.

Madeleine Irwin, CapeUK; “This was an invaluable opportunity to bring together cultural, creative and educational leaders from across the region.  Throughout this event we continually added our questions, thoughts and voice to the national debate.  Our Link Up event highlighted the importance of collaborating and having a collective ‘northern’ voice to demonstrate, celebrate and debate the importance of cultural learning.”

Attendees met in the afternoon to discuss the three Big Questions; What barriers do you see to the delivery of cultural learning? What new kinds of partnerships and online support are needed to take cultural learning forward? What one key idea for the future delivery of cultural learning would you like to share with other professionals? 

We then linked to the live video of Ed Vaizey, Minster for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries who was at the British Museum, he defended the government’s position on arts in schools and said they believed in allowing schools more local autonomy. 

Professionals that attended the event ranged from large arts organisations to individual arts practitioners and specialist schools.  The northern delegates were particularly keen to ensure that the Government recognises that cultural excellence can take place in a community centre or a school as well as a national theatre.  

There is a strong track record of high quality participative cultural and creative learning in the North – which collectively we want to ensure is not diminished, by the end of the event we had a shared commitment to explore practical ways of making this happen and demonstrate the wider societal impact of this work most effectively.

 

Photo Caption: CapeUK staff were gathering a collective northern voice – thoughts, questions, comments to send via chat rooms and twitter to feed into the national event at the British Museum.

 

Twitter hashtag #culturelearning