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Tags: arts | events | news item  The arts have the power to transform lives. Arts Council England believes that myplace provides an unprecedented opportunity to create new centres of excellence where young people can enjoy an exciting range of high-quality arts activities in dedicated, high quality spaces they can call their own.
Arts Council England works to get more art to more people in more places. Arts Council England develops and promotes the arts across England, acting as an independent body at arm's length from government. The Arts Council is producing a leaflet to support myplace projects to develop high quality arts spaces and activities for young people. The leaflet gives good examples from across the country of how the arts can provide highly engaging activities for young people to enrich their lives and those of their communities. It also provides useful information and resources to support myplace projects to build partnerships with the arts sector and to develop their own programmes of arts activities for young people.
The Power of the Arts
The arts can have an important role to play in the design, development and delivery as part of myplace projects. Local artists can work with project teams, bringing their skills and creativity to create specialist areas such as dance, sculpture or music studios. Creative approaches to consultation e.g. the use of drama or visual workshops can ensure that young people make decisions which shape the overall vision and inform plans. Once the project is complete, the arts can form an integral part of the activities provided to reach more young people, particularly the hardest to reach groups. The arts can enable young people to build confidence and self esteem, learn new skills, and gain qualifications.
Case Studies
The case studies are all excellent examples of the work of statutory youth services in Leicestershire, Greater Manchester and North Yorkshire and illustrate how the arts can lead to positive outcomes for young people.
Mountfields Lodge Youth Centre and Charnwood Arts in Loughborough work with young unaccompanied refugees and asylum seekers through the arts as part of the Dreamers project. This work exemplifies how strong partnerships between youth services and arts organisations and artists can address the needs of the most vulnerable young people and foster a greater sense of social cohesion within the local community.
Gorse Hill Studios in Trafford also provides an excellent example of how the arts can be used to engage young people who live in the most challenging of circumstances and to help them to transform their life chances. Using the Arts Award, the national qualification which supports young people to develop as artists and arts leaders, staff help young people to raise their aspirations and gain accreditation towards the Bronze, Silver or Gold award.
In North Yorkshire, England's largest rural county, Connecting Youth Culture (CYC) uses the arts in an imaginative way to connect young people across huge distances to each other and to artists and arts organisations. Using its small mobile fleet of vehicles kitted out with specialist equipment, CYC takes the arts literally to where young people live. Every two years, 5,000 young people come together for CultureShock, the highly successful youth arts festival.
Making it happen - Resources and Information
The leaflet gives details of key organisations and agencies in the arts and cultural sector who can help myplace projects plan and achieve their ambitions for the arts for young people.
The leaflet will appear on the myplace support team website shortly.
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