envision

The context

The organisation

The NR5 Project is a community based registered charity working with young people and adults in Norwich, UK. We provide a community based, open access venue that delivers services and activities including: education, leisure, media training, music studio facilities and training - ICT facilities, community radio broadcasting and training and citizenship and wider community engagement. The project is part of the New Deal for Communities pro-gramme for the North Earlham, Larkman and Marlpit areas of Norwich. It is also a community driven regeneration programme funded by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. The project is now based in purpose built radio, music and media studios, as well as a whole new block to house the Future Education programme. This is a specialist school inclusion pro-gramme provided for young people who due to emotional and/or behaviour difficulties, would be permanently excluded from mainstream school. Future Education offers a holistic, community based alternative to mainstream provision, delivered in partnership with the Norwich Excellence Centre (Excellence in Cities Initiative) and partner high schools.
The Future Education programme is designed to:
•    Increase attendance (currently averaging a 75% increase in attendance for all groups) Provide behaviour and mentoring support
•    Ensure that a young person remains in compulsory education
•    To lessen the effects of disaffection, anti social behaviour and offending
•    Students study for a range of qualifications and awards to include:
•    GCSE Maths, English, Science and Art.
•    Prince's Trust XL - 2 year alternative curriculum programme in place of other GCSE's.
•    Arts Awards (Bronze & Silver)
•    Tailored work experience placements

Students who would benefit from Future Education are identified in year 9 by the Norwich Excellence Centre and partner high school. The majority of our students have ADHD but there may be other reasons why a young person is referred.   Future Education currently has 18 students, (9 in year10 and 10 in year11) and 5 part-time members of staff.  The students attend between the hours of 9.30-2.30pm every day of the working week.  As far as I am aware we were severely under-resourced and not covering costs, but hopefully this will change soon as Children's Services have agreed to support the initiative.

The situation

The Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts recognised that local, vulnerable young people were not accessing the gallery space.  They approached Future Education at the NR5 Project to be-come a partner and I proposed a project that could explore how the students may gain ownership of the gallery space, increase their engagement with art, as producers, viewers and advocates and develop their understanding of the careers within Galleries.

The idea

The gallery space is an example of a type of space where they would tend to feel uncomfortable.  The artists and gallery staff are personifications of creativity and authority that these students would rarely have met or with whom they would have successfully interacted. The idea was to incorporate regular visits, with a selected guide, to the gallery. During these vis-its the students would participate in gallery based activities that I would plan or on occasion work with an artist in the studio space.  I told the students that they would be evaluating their experiences of SCVA, but to recognise the opportunity they were being given and respect it, even if some of them felt 'Art' was boring! The objectives were to combine their on-going 'curricula' needs, provide opportunity to develop their creative, personal, social and political capabilities and investigate how the SCVA could facilitate all or any of these.

The project

Planning

Initially I communicated with a member of staff at the SCVA to discuss visit dates, access to the studio and artists.  A total of twelve dates were set with hopefully three of those being artist workshops. I was aiming to allow the students more control over the visits once a rap-port had been created with staff at the SCVA.  The substance of the visits was a mix of short guided tours, investigating the gallery spaces and discussions about the art.

Delivery

The students filmed what they wanted from each visit as I facilitated and researched them on my own.

Outcomes

Impact on participants

Lots. As I was the main facilitator of the students in the gallery and their Art Educator at Future Education most of the impact on them is my observation, which is knowledgeably subjective.  I work very closely with the students at Future Education and try to be acutely aware of their learning behaviour.  The project endorses a holistic approach, which is necessary when you consider the obvious and sometimes unseen obstacles that exclude these young people from their communities, society and its culture.  Every Friday morning at least more than one student would burst into the Art room and ask "Are we going to the gallery today" and if I said "no" some sort of expletive would be emitted.  I would call that a positive outcome.  One young man, who was excluded from a special boarding school, discovered Francis Bacon and decided that he didn't think that a lot of the other highly valuable pieces were valuable to him.  An enormous amount of informal discussion went into why galleries exist, who pays for and insures them and who visits them.   Many found the 'not touching' excruciating, but when their own work was displayed in the gallery they began to compre-hend the rule, although not always follow it! The students evaluated the project by selecting images from the visit video, adding comments and context. The collaborative work became their exhibition piece. The students behaviour shifted over the visits and became more em-powered.  In fact, although the last visit ended in confrontation, they all chose to attend the Youth Launch, interact with other attendees, Look round the other work and give their opinions, relax in the gallery space and eat a lunch, which was designed for a more sophisticated palette.  I could extend the student's threads of development into many areas using a multitude of examples that would cover self-confidence, concentration, practical critical reasoning, compassion, aesthetic judgement, multi-cultural sensitivity etc, but it would be quite laborious.  I do feel strongly that only those who knew these students individually before the project would recognise the shifts in their personal development as very few staff at the SCVA interacted with them regularly. Some things are hard to evaluate or maybe I'm not experienced at proving them, but that doesn't mean they are 'soft' outcomes. 

Impact on others involved

The students definitely had an impact on the staff at the gallery.  It resulted in a couple of confrontations and the last visited was handled, as one student said 'inappropriately'.  The SCVA partner members were very understanding and accommodating, but staff that had to deal with the students in the gallery space were less accepting and flexible.  The students do not conduct themselves traditionally, and could be viewed as a risk to the artwork.  They aimed to finish the project by guiding an 'Alien' they had made around the gallery and filming it.  The Alien was tricky to hold, so a student put him on his shoulders.  As we walked in I was asked to sign some documents, not a good time! The students continued into the gallery without me and were quickly confronted by a rather aggressive security guard.  Considering these students background confrontation without proof of intent is not a good way to handle the situation.  My fear was that this would have undone all their positive feelings about the gallery and put the students into a 'them versus us' behaviour mode.  Luckily we modified our route only to be confronted again downstairs.  This time I was confronted by two members of staff who accused me of not being 'in control', which made the students very defensive. Luckily I was 'in control' and the students whilst throwing abuse did leave. Nothing was damaged during our visit, but obviously, according to someone important rules were being broken, there had been notification of our visit and what we intended to do in advance. On our return to the Future Education building we sat down and recounted the event.  We discussed whether it could have been avoided, who started it and how it made them feel.  In turn I fed all of this information to our partner co-ordinator at the SCVA, who handled it well and suggested a meeting with the other staff, sadly I couldn't fit it in.  The students still decided to attend the Launch, as mentioned above.

Institutional change

I have struggled to get time to attend Cluster meetings and feedback our experiences, although they have all been very aware of the group that I work with and how engaging them can be very challenging.  I am unaware of any plans to adopt different practices or procedures as a result of the student's experiences.  There have been suggestions as to how more regular involvement of 'excluded' young people could be encouraged in the SCVA, but nothing concrete as yet.  I presume funding will be an issue for both organisations.  I would like students at Future Education to be able to apply for some funding to attend some of the workshops that are held throughout the year and some of them would like to be invited to give an opinion to any plans for youth involvement.

Lessons learned

What worked and what didn’t

5.1    What worked
•    Sympathetic guide at the beginning who found the students reasonably inoffensive
•    Face to face engagement with art/artefacts
•    An experienced artist run workshop with high ratio of staff from Future Ed. (Highly practical, but not too highly skilled)
•    Communication between myself and the artist about 'expectations'
•    Realisation of the value of art and recognition of the art market
What didn’t
•    Should have been introduced to different members of the staff and talked to them about their jobs.
•    Students to feedback directly to partners at SCVA
•    More welcoming reception and interest taken in students
•    More experienced artist run workshops, didn't gain enough new art skills
•    Visit behind the scenes

Next steps

I have always believed in visiting galleries with students and will continue to do so.  I will continue to approach artists and galleries to work with Future Education students and actively encourage young people to access galleries and other art institutions.  I found the personal development conference I went to in Newcastle insightful.  Often working with 'excluded' young people can mean that you become isolated in your teaching, although it is al-ways challenging and engaging.  Meeting with other creative practitioners and hearing about their project outcomes was a fantastic opportunity to review my own practise. This project has provided evidence to push for more funding and extend Future Education's network with practising artists, art educators and galleries.

Appendix

Photographic evidence available on disc.
6    Statistical information for envision’s Grants for the Arts Activity Report
6.1    Where did your project take place?
    a    Your activity happened in a specific place (or places)

Full address
 Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts

University of East Anglia

Norwich



Full postcode    N    R  
5      
    7    T    J

If the place where your activity happened does not have an address (for example, it was in a park), please tell us where it took place and give us the name of the lo-cal authority area instead.
      

Other places where your activity happened
If your activity happened in other places, please give us the postcodes of each place.  If any of the places do not have a postcode, please give us the name of the local authority area instead. We have made space for you to give details of up to five other places.  Please use a separate sheet if you need more and write ‘See attachment’ on the first line below.

Full postcode or local authority area:      NR5 8EG
Full postcode or local authority area:      NR2 4PG
Full postcode or local authority area:      
Full postcode or local authority area:      
Full postcode or local authority area:      

If you have filled in part a, go to question 3. If part a is not relevant to your activity, please fill in part b.

    b    Your activity was not specific to a place
If your activity was not specific to a place, please give details. (For example, ‘This activity happened across a wide area or across a region’, ‘This activity took place on the internet’ or ‘We produced a publication’.)

     

6.2        How many people do you estimate benefited from the activity?
Please give an estimate for your activity.

‘Taking part’ means doing the activity. ‘Audience’ includes people going to an exhibition or performance, and people getting access to work that is printed, recorded, broadcast or on the internet.

This activity    Number
    
Artists    2
    
Others taking part    12
    
Audience    Don't Know

6.3        What are the age ranges of the people who benefited from your activity? Mark all relevant boxes.
    
     
 All age ranges
    
 
 Children under five
    
 
 Children (five to 11)
    
x     Young people (12 to 15)
    
x     Young people (16 to 19)
    
     
 Young people (20 to 24)
    
     
 Adults (25 to 64)
    
     
 Adults (65 and over)

6.4    Was your activity directed at, or particularly relevant to, any of the following groups of people? Please mark any relevant boxes.
    
     
 Disabled people
    
x     People at risk of ‘social exclusion’ (not being able to take part fully in society because of, for example, poverty, prejudice or isolation)
    
    
     
 Asian or Asian British (includes Bangladeshi, Indian, Pakistani
 or any other Asian background)
    
    
     
 Black or Black British (includes African, Caribbean)
    
     
 Chinese
    
     
 Any other ethnic group
 (Please describe below in no more than 10 words.)
    
      

6.5    Please give details of the results of your activity.

This activity    Number
    
Number of performance or exhibition days    5
    
Number of new products or commissions*

         
    
Period of employment for artists (in days)    2
    
Number of sessions for education, training or taking part. ‘Taking part’ means doing the activity (Divide the day into three sessions - morning, afternoon and evening. A ‘session’ is any one of, or part of one of, these. For ex-ample, a half-day education workshop would be one ses-sion.)    
    17
Cd's of the students attendance included