CASE STUDY: CREATIVE & CULTURAL PROGRAMMES

In the past year we have been able to progress the Urban Games & Hip Hop (UGHH) project considerably. It has had a positive impact upon the work of Solar Learning (Community Interest Company). We have been able to deliver an active and dynamic programme which has successfully engaged healthy numbers of young people in our work.

In the past year we have been able to progress the Urban Games & Hip Hop (UGHH) project considerably. It has had a positive impact upon the work of Solar Learning (Community Interest Company). We have been able to deliver an active and dynamic programme which has successfully engaged healthy numbers of young people in our work.
The importance for our organisation in utilising creative and cultural programmes helps serve 2 purposes; firstly as end in itself, with the engagement and participation of participants in innovative creative and cultural activity, such as music or street dance. Secondly, as a bridge into more sustained and consolidated work with young people to build learning and capacity across other areas of their lives.
Also the impact of this upon Solar Learning has been considerable, enabling us to develop further work linked to the UGHH, as well as establishing partnerships and collaborations with other agencies, e.g. North Tyneside YMCA. We have been able to develop other areas of work linked to the core NE GENERATION project, including the Urban Games Road Show concept which will enable us to offer activities linked to the UGHH work to schools and community groups.

Our biggest achievement has been the effective engagement of young people into our youth leadership team, our performance team The Urban G’s and the youth media group. Each of these groups have been actively involved in the design and running of the project which was best exemplified with their combined efforts to help us deliver the first Urban & Hip Hop Games at The Sage Gateshead in October 2010. From this group have emerged some articulate and engaged young leaders who fully identify with the project and take an active lead in work we do. This is evidence that our approach of viewing year 1 of the project’s primary aim to engage a group of young people who will “own” the project, as being a sound one. As a result work we did in 2010 was by and large designed with this in mind. Our work and report produced by international youth led expert Dave Turner best captures this aspiration and achievement. (See our Youth Development Programmes page for a link).

Our biggest challenge in the first year has been delivering the project within the budgetary constraints of the funding and alongside this meeting the aspirations of the young people involved who have been keen to make sure the remaining time on the project makes it bigger and better. This has created additional pressures to deliver the work in line with the growing ambitions of the young people involved in the project and ourselves as an organisation. As we have called it “delivering a Marks and Spencer project on a Netto budget”.

On the upside of this challenge has been our ability to gain in-kind support for the project to enable us to grow the impact of the project, due to the genuine interest in the project regionally and the way it has captured the imagination of young people seeking to engage in innovative creative and cultural activities.

8th August 2011