CapeUK are proud to be working collaboratively with The Brigshaw Cooperative Trust, a group of seven primary schools, a high school and a Children’s centre, serving the communities of Kippax, Allerton Bywater, Swillington, Great Preston and Ledston in Outer East Leeds. Other partners include the Co-operative Group, Leeds City Council, Leeds City College and Carnegie Leaders in Learning Partnership. The Trust, which was formed in April 2010, builds on the successful collaboration of The Brigshaw Federation. The members of the shared ‘Trust’ have come together to strengthen and sustain partnership working and to help achieve better outcomes for children, young people and families both in the schools and across the wider community.
A group of young Asian men have spent the last three months working on a short film which was launched in Dewsbury, whilst also achieving Bronze Arts Award. The primary aim of the film project, and other schemes, is to support vulnerable individuals who may be targeted or recruited to violent extremism. Organisers say it will also help to support mainstream voices in the community and challenge violent extremist ideology. The film, called 'What's Your Identity?', explores issues important to the five-strong group including identity, belonging and the role and influence of the media on their lives. ‘Pathways into Adulthood’ is one of six projects undertaken with funding from Prevent (Preventing violent extremism).
Kirklees Young Offending Team (YOT) is made up of representatives from agencies including the Police, Probation Service, Children and Young People Service and Health. Kirklees YOT identifies the needs of each young offender by assessing them and addressing the specific problems that make the young person offend.
The young film-makers were assisted by Yorkshire-based Lippy Productions as part of a partnership project between the Kirklees Youth Offending Team and the Kirklees Young People's Service. During this process the group achieved the Bronze Arts Award, an accreditation which is managed regionally by CapeUK.
We took the group to a play at West Yorkshire Playhouse called “the Black Album” – For many of the young people it was the first time they had been to a live theatre performance. The play was directly related to our film project, as it explored the experience of a young British male who enters university where he is vulnerable to being recruited to an extremist cause. The young people were able to identify empathise with the main character as he was someone who was susceptible to peer pressure and like them was caught between different cultures. The young people were impressed by the use of a small space and the use of props to change the scenes.
The young people learnt how to use the film camera and editing equipment and shared these skills with staff supervising the project. This experience of sharing their film making skills increased their confidence and allowed them to “show off” to staff which they enjoyed.
Through their involvement, the young participants gained film-making skills and boosted their self-esteem, teamworking skills and communication. They became more self-aware, critical thinkers and gained knowledge of oppression and racism and ways to address these issues.
The film project was based around the experience of British born Pakistani heritage young men from Dewsbury in North Kirklees. Their experiences and views on how they see themselves and growing up as an ethnic minority within Britain can be transferred to other young man to increase awareness, empathy and allow space to explore difficult and challenging areas of work with young people today.
The feedback from the Arts Award moderator was: “an interesting and varied set of folders which showed the young people had clearly enjoyed working on their Bronze journeys. All the folders were individual yet had a common bond of thought which enabled them in the end to achieve their Arts award goal. Some superb film work and personal reflections in their Hero and Apprenticeships. Well done!"
Cllr Peter O'Neill, Kirklees Council's Cabinet Member for Safer Stronger Communities, said: "This project has benefited everyone who took part and has given them useful skills for the future. The project has also demonstrated how the arts, as therapy, can broaden a young person's perspective, change their outlook on life and help them become better citizens."
The Cultural Learning Alliance (CLA) are leading an ambitious platform of events across the country to highlight the importance of all children and young people having meaningful access to culture in this difficult economic climate.
CapeUK are hosting a FREE regional BIG LINK UP EVENT in Leeds and we would like to invite you to join the national debate on Tuesday 23 November 2010, between 2pm – 5pm at WYP First Floor, 6 St Peter's Building, St Peter's Square, Leeds, LS9 8AH
We understand that this is very short notice, but it is an invaluable opportunity to bring together cultural, creative and educational leaders from across the region. It is important that we have a collective voice to demonstrate, celebrate and debate the importance of cultural learning. This event will be a national platform to advocate to the Government and ensure access to cultural learning for children and young people.
Our Regional Big Link Up Event: 14:00 – 14:15: Arrival and Refreshments
14:15 – 14:45: Regional Group Discussion facilitated by Pat Cochrane, Chief Executive, CapeUK 14:50 – 15:00: Live Video Link to Ed Vaizey, Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries 15:00 – 15:30: Live Video Link of the *National Panel Discussion and Questions – What have we achieved with cultural learning and where now?
15:30 – 16:00: Regional Reactions and Discussions 16:00 – 16:20: Live Video Link of the *National Panel Conclusions 16:20: Round Up and Reflect
NB: Throughout this event we aim to continually add our collective voice to the national debate *The National Panel will be; Selina Borji (CCE Young People’s Development Group), Althea Eunshile (Arts Council England), John Knell (Intelligence Agency), Michael Morpurgo (Writer), Anthony Sargent (The Sage Gateshead) and Professor Mick Waters (leading educationalist).
The three Big Questions are: • 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?
Please bring along great examples of cultural learning to aid our debates and discussions.
If you would like to attend this event please RSVP by emailing cape@capeuk.org – include the name/s of attendees, organisation and job title.
Creativity: Luxury or Lifeline? Survive and Thrive in a changing Educational Landscape
On 30 September 2009 – 250 delegates travelled to Bradford for our Conference Creativity: Luxury or Lifeline? Survive and Thrive in a Changing Educational Landscape. Three keynote speakers launched the conference themes of creativity at the centre of young people’s learning, partnership at the centre of practice, and enquiry at the centre of professional development. Delegates then had the opportunity to explore their responses to the speeches in 27 exciting seminars.
Valerie Hannon sought to move us forward from creativity per se to considering both the need for, and evidence of, social innovation. She illustrated the extent to which there is already a move towards democratic innovation, often channelled through IT connections, involving mass collaboration and self-organisation. This tendency may be spurred on by the widespread recognition that those who had previously held the reins in determining the future (policy makers, bankers etc) had fallen short, despite their own access to the ‘best’ education the world had to offer. Valerie advised that we look for inspiration and leadership beyond policy makers and school improvement strategies to the wider and more responsive world of social innovation. This stood the chance of getting beyond the deep, sometimes hidden, and always damaging disengagement of young people.
Paul Collard revealed that while he had often been asked to talk about creativity, he had never had to talk about partnership. He raised a number of concerns about the wisdom of assuming that partnership was necessarily an appropriate approach to our work. He focussed largely on the more organisational aspects of partnership (funding, strategic, programmatic etc) but in raising the challenges faced for partnership working it became clear that some are common to both strategic and personal partnership working – unequal power, communications and co-ordination etc. Paul suggested that the cadre approach to partnerships with young people did little to change the wider culture (perhaps raising the question of how very limited interventions in schools could hope to achieve what the rhetoric requires) but instead led to further rounds of replicant projects.
At the end of the day, Arnie Aprill suggested that focussing on those more personal partnerships between teachers, creative professionals and learners may have the potential to strengthen the case for, and inform the approach to partnership working at more strategic levels.
Anna Craft discussed the place of enquiry at the centre of professional development. She proposed that enquiry needed to take into account the changing characteristics of childhood and youth and highlighted their engagement with IT as central to those changes. Do we wish to question how things work, do we have the desire to understand, and do we have a commitment to action that might spring from new understanding? Can people be taught to be reflective? Who gets to be impacted upon when enquiry processes are undertaken? (Anna had some surprising answers to that one!)
Offering a CAPE Chicago perspective, Arnie Aprill’s summation seemed to caution against planning too much ahead of time, and instead letting the work have space to emerge through the developing relationships/partnerships, which themselves needed the right kick-start through joint or co-training.
The media team from Our Lady of Victories Primary School Keighleybroadcast live from the Cape UK ‘Learning and Creativity’ Conference at the National Media Museum. Our Lady of Victories have recently been awarded ‘School of Creativity’ status.
CapeUK is the delivering agency for the Creative Partnerships programmes for over 150 schools in Yorkshire. This is England's flagship creative learning programme, it aims to help young ...
