Working with Young People
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Working with young people Materials from the course 14 January 2011 facilitator: Jo Graham Working with young people Contents Contributors to the course page 3 Youth Participation Framework page 5 Youth Forum Toolkit overview page 7 Young Curators Group at the Light Box page 9 Further useful information page 11 The political context page 15 Safeguarding page 17 Signposts for resources for funding page 19 Ensuring access for all audiences page 26 Evaluation page 28 2 About the contributors Vikki Pearson Vikki Pearson is the MLA Senior Programme Manager for the Mighty Creatives; a Young People’s creative development agency in the East Midlands. She is responsible for supporting the delivery of the Strategic Commissioning programme in the East Midlands and East of England with a focus on the development of a youth engagement framework. Following a degree in Medieval Archaeology and training as a teacher she spent nearly 5 years as a primary classroom teacher in Northamptonshire but left in 1994 to become the Education Officer for Northamptonshire Heritage. Thus began 16 years of working in heritage education and interpretation in a number of different management and delivery roles – from Education / Interpretation Officers for the Heritage and Countryside sections of Northants County Council to Project Manager for a HLF project in Rutland and more latterly as a freelance heritage education & interpretation consultant. She has developed and delivered classroom activities, lectures, field trips, public events, groups, play schemes and online training for a wide range of audiences and published many resources and digital learning materials for schools, teachers and heritage educators. www.themightycreatives.com/ Claire Adler Claire Adler has nearly 20 years experience working in museums. She was part of the small team that set up Hackney Museum in London, where there was a very unusual visitor demographic: 22% of the audience were between the ages of 11 and 16 visiting outside of school hours. She therefore developed a ground breaking project, teaching social documentary photography to teenagers at risk of exclusion for drug and alcohol abuse resulting in a temporary exhibition that was attended by 8000 people, nearly half of whom were between the ages of 12 and 19 years old. For the last six years Claire has been working as a Museum Learning Consultant specialising in developing consultations and projects with non-traditional museum audiences, including teenage mothers, excluded teenagers and migrant workers. She has developed and delivered Youth Forums in Kent, Northampton and Nottinghamshire which resulted in the MLA funded publication ‘How to develop a Youth Forum in your museum – A toolkit of ideas’. See www.claireadler.co.uk James Armstrong James Armstrong has worked with young people for over 10 years and is currently working for Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust as their Youth Inclusion & Volunteer Co- ordinator. After completing a degree in sculpture and a post 16 teaching qualification he spent 5 years teaching in secondary schools, before becoming a Youth & Communities Worker for a community charity attached to a housing association. James has been working for The Historic Dockyard at Chatham since January 2007 and his primary roles have been to look after the well being and co-ordinate the activities of over 230 volunteers engaged at The Dockyard, oversee and train the Trusts staff & volunteers in Safeguarding and Child Protection issues, co-ordinate and deliver the Trusts Overnight Stay Programme on HMS Cavalier and run Youth Engagement programmes including their Work Experience programme which engages around 50 placements per year. For further details on The Historic Dockyard at Chatham please take a look at their website: http://www.thedockyard.co.uk/Home 3 Melissa Strauss Melissa Strauss is a Policy Advisor in Participation and Learning at the Heritage Lottery Fund. Her role covers audience development, community participation and volunteering. She also manages the HLF’s Young Roots funding programme, which aims to engage young people with heritage. Melissa has previous experience of working directly with young people and involving communities with arts and heritage through a variety of paid and volunteer roles in museums and community organisations. Jane Nash Jane Nash is the Schools Special Projects Officer for the Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove, and has been in post for three years. The post is funded through a partnership between the Royal Pavilion & Museums and Cardinal Newman Catholic School in Hove. Jane’s role is to develop humanities-based resources and sessions for schools across the Key Stages, but with special attention focused on KS3+. The role also offers opportunities to involve young people in projects that explore different ways of making museums more engaging and accessible to this age group. Trish Popkin Trish Popkin is the Strategic Commissioning Project Manager for MLA Council, with responsibility for the South East regional programme, the Science in Your World national programme in partnership with the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum, and the 14-19 audience strand. Trish has worked in museum and cultural learning for a range of museums and other organisations for over 10 years, from development, through delivery and evaluation. She is particularly keen on developing partnerships across the culture and education fields, and the ways in which young people can both participate in, as well as play a role in the development of the cultural lives of their communities. Rachel Lackie Rachel Lackie is Community Engagement Officer at the Royal Pavilion & Museums. The role includes responsibility for under-represented groups in the wider community including the participation of young people not in formal education. Rachel has been in this post for just over a year. Prior to this she worked in youth theatre and community arts and more recently in the community voluntary sector running a community carnival which also worked with a large number of young people as volunteers, interns and artist producers. Lynn Yeo Lynn Yeo is the Education Manager at The Lightbox. She has worked in education, exhibition design and public communications in museums in the UK, US and Singapore, and as a classroom teacher for children between the ages of 8 - 11 in the US. Her interest in working with children and young people in museum settings was sparked by her own positive personal experiences in museums as a child and young person. She has spent the last 5 years developing the Education Programme at The Lightbox, working with audiences of all ages and abilities. Her work with young people includes creating the Young Curators Project at The Lightbox which was set up in 2006, developing a close working partnership with Woking College which began in 2005 and working with and evaluating the Queens Teens programme at the Queens Museum of Art. She plays an active role in fundraising for Education projects at The Lightbox. Lynn has a BFA in Graphic Design and a MSEd in Museum Education. 4 Youth Engagement Framework – draft outline Youth engagement is not just about the participation of young people as an audience or consumers of the museum / archive service or even their recruitment as volunteers or employees, rather it is the process of ensuring that the needs and benefits of working with Young People are central to the work, ethos and attitudes of an organisation. It will offer meaningful and sustained participation opportunities for Young People to:- • be listened to, • make decisions – influencing outcomes & service provision & contributing to change, • work collaboratively - in partnership with organisations that value and respect Young Peoples’ contribution / participation • develop skills, responsibility and leadership Why to What ….. The Youth Engagement framework aims to consider how organisations can move from Why to What when exploring the role of Young People within the sector bringing together user need and provider behaviour. It draws upon opportunities for alignment with the wider cultural provision for CYP agenda / programmes such as Find Your Talent and Hear by Right, and aims to offer organisations the opportunity to consider the differing roles of Young People when engaging with the sector and provide an easily accessible model that will supports the sector in increasing participation in museum / archive programmes through meaningful youth engagement. 5 The Core Triangle - Authentic approach, suitable environment & a spectrum of opportunity At the heart of framework is a recognition that fundamental principles or commitments must underlie the development of meaningful engagement for Youth People .... 1. Authentic and two-way participation with a commitment to engaging the whole person and recognising diversity 2. Creation of a safe and welcoming environment that recognises and values the process as an experience for both the young people and the sector (safeguarding, staff training, a welcoming approach and committed organisation) 3. Recognition of the need to offer an incremental spectrum of engagement activity / opportunities which meet user need and offers Young People the opportunity to influence, collaborate and change provider behaviour The Young People / Museum & Archive Circles – User Need meeting Provider Behaviour The elements or types of engagement contained within the framework are not envisaged as a ladder of engagement but instead is shown as a circle or spectrum of engagement