Richard Ings http://richardings.posterous.com Most recent posts at Richard Ings posterous.com Wed, 10 Aug 2011 04:26:00 -0700 The Knight Crew | Glyndebourne http://richardings.posterous.com/the-knight-crew-glyndebourne http://richardings.posterous.com/the-knight-crew-glyndebourne Staged in Spring last year and featured in a three-part documentary presented by Gareth 'The Choir' Malone,  The Knight Crew marked a step-change for education at Glyndebourne.  Envisioned as ‘commissioned work of exceptional quality for young people to perform and come to as an audience’ and nearly three years in the making, this was in many ways the most ambitious – and certainly the most expensive – project ever undertaken by the education department: a professional opera premièred on the main stage, with a top-flight artistic team behind it, including Julian Philips, Glyndebourne’s first composer-in residence; a clutch of professional soloists; an orchestra over half of which (37 out of 50) was drawn from young non-professionals aged 13 to 19; a 52-strong main chorus almost entirely composed of teenagers with little if any experience, drawn from over 500 young people from local schools in poorer areas of the region; a small choral group of almost all similarly untried women, chosen to represent their mothers; and yet anotheramateur chorus composed of 12-year old boys.

 The subject matter was ambitious, too – addressing the whole vexed issue of gang-based youth culture, its obsession with respect and its tragic fixation on defending its territory, often backed up with the threat and use of knives.  Where West Side Story famously took Shakespeare’s story of Romeo and Juliet as a framing device for its tale of warring New York tribes, The Knight Crew viewed its young protagonists through the lens of the legendary King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table.  Notions of kingship, loyalty and honour in those stories find their contemporary equivalent in the urban wasteland, where the bag-lady, Myrtle, appears to be the latest incarnation of Merlin, with the gift of prophecy: Art will be king, she says, and so it turns out to be.

 An extract from my evaluation report will be posted in due course.  In the meantime, a full account of the process - including outcomes from the evaluation – can be found at http://glyndebourne.com/story-knight-crew-project

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Tue, 09 Aug 2011 13:33:00 -0700 Talking to Byron http://richardings.posterous.com/talking-to-byron http://richardings.posterous.com/talking-to-byron
Young people rarely get a good press, it seems.  Either they are perpetrators of anti-social activity – writ larger than ever in current headlines around the country – or they are victims of it: specifically, victims of knife crime.  As a way of helping young people to avoid such victimhood and take some responsibility for putting an end to the carrying of knives, the National Youth Theatre embarked in 2009 on an ongoing  campaign to bring an awareness of the issues to the classroom.  What made this project stand out for many from a welter of knife-crime related projects going into schools was, first, that it seemed an unlikely initiative from the most prestigious youth theatre company in the country.  Many outsiders assume the NYT is simply about producing the next generation of Great Actors – it has, indeed, acquired quite a roster of names over the last half century including the two most recent Dr Who's.  However, the NYT also has a long track record of working with young people in prison and has, in recent years, opened up access to young people without education, employment or training through its Playing Up programme.

Members of Playing Up were heavily involved not just in acting in Talking to Byron – the pilot project – but in helping Tanika Gupta to write the short play at the heart of it.  This was the other key difference: rather than adults coming in to preach, this was about young people talking to other young people.  This gave it realism and an exceptional emotional punch.  Since the pilot there has been a further 'knife crime awareness' project in Birmingham and new developments on the way.  In the process, the NYT, too, has radically changed – recognising that the division between 'mainstream' and 'educational' (or 'access') work is not only an artificial one but an obstacle to a more holistic approach to creating theatre with and for young people.

This extract from my report on the pilot project is published here for the first time by kind permission of the NYT; other than a few 'in-house' recommendations, this is the complete text of the evaluation of a highly successful initiative.

Talking to Byron evaluation.pdf Download this file

 

 

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Tue, 09 Aug 2011 08:44:00 -0700 In transit http://richardings.posterous.com/in-transit http://richardings.posterous.com/in-transit

In arguing the case for arts-based methodologies with funders and policy-makers at higher levels, the Thames Valley Partnership provides an unusually persuasive model: while most organisations making such interventions have come out of the arts sector, and might be perceived by more sceptical outsiders as having a vested interest in developing new ‘markets’ for their services, Thames Valley Partnership was established in 1993 as a way of combining the resources of organisations from the statutory, voluntary and private sectors to find long-term, sustainable solutions to problems of crime and social exclusion and it is only over the last six years or so that it has made a decisive shift and put ‘arts at the heart’ of its approach to community safety.  That means it discovered for itself the power of the arts as a practical solution to a practical crisis.

Last May I was asked to witness and write about a dance project, devised by Judy Munday at TVP, that took just over a week to turn a group of variously 'disaffected' young people into a contemporary dance company.  This was a temporary transformation of course but it was startling.  Rather than simply examine impact, however – recognising that all good participatory arts project have this potential to change attitudes and even behaviour – Judy asked me to look at the project from a fresh angle or two. 

In Transit.pdf Download this file

New people or new dance Transit 2010.pdf Download this file

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Tue, 09 Aug 2011 07:37:00 -0700 Taking a journey http://richardings.posterous.com/taking-a-journey http://richardings.posterous.com/taking-a-journey

With young people in the news for all the wrong reasons once again and with youth services and programmes being early victims of government cuts, the project described in Taking a Journey seems even more significant than it did back in 2005.  My report, which was eventually published two years later, describes an innovative approach to reaching young people that agencies and services had not been able to engage before.  The initiative was the brainchild of Simon Dear, then at the Children's Fund on the Isle of Wight, who saw that young people themselves might help to solve this problem by being directly involved in discussions about their situation and asked how they thought services might be improved or made more relevant to them.  The third annual 'Big Day Out' of this novel consultation with young people put the arts centre stage, bringing a range of versatile theatre and music practitioners together with young people in a field beside Brading Roman Villa.  What this report does is explore the practical business – and outcomes – of a participatory arts project that found a positive politics in communal creativity.  There are hints here of how we might still pull back from the brink.

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Mon, 01 Mar 2010 15:28:00 -0800 Creating Chances http://richardings.posterous.com/creating-chances http://richardings.posterous.com/creating-chances

Creating Chances came out in 2003 but remains, I hope, relevant to considering 'how arts interventions can help to reach the marginalised and excluded child', to quote the blurb on the back cover.  It certainly remains a watershed in my own writing and thinking about what actually happens when artists work with young people and their teachers.  Researching it was a pleasure - it is a rare commission that encourages you to take such a personal approach to documentation or evaluation.  Luckily, Simon Richey, who recently retired as Assistant Director (Education) at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, was always keen to try new approaches and to take risks in his groundbreaking programmes, whether that was pioneering arts work in Pupil Referral Units (PRUs) or researching what a 'human-scale school' might look like.  That sense of adventure was tempered with strategy, too - in the case of the PRU 'first-time projects', he commissioned not one but three publications, so that readers could have, for once, a rounded picture of an arts programme.

 

Mine was the first to emerge, an impressionistic account of a dozen visits made to arts projects in PRUs and Learning Support Units around the country, in which I tried to capture the actuality of the experiences that each centre was going through.  Not long afterwards, the National Foundation for Educational Research produced its own report, Serious Play, which pursued a more rigorous approach, drawing out some harder evidence of the impact of the Gulbenkian's programme, which was partnered by the Arts Council.  It was interesting to see how both reports came, by their different routes, to similar conclusions.   Doncaster Community Arts (darts) was then funded to produce The Art of Engagement, a very useful guide to setting up and running arts projects in PRUs - copies can still be obtained from them at www.thepoint.org.uk/publications.  This series of reports came full circle with Simon's commissioning of Everything Stopped, a remarkable documentary about a dance project with a PRU and an arts venue in Barnet.  In the liner notes I wrote for the DVD version, I commented that this film offered 'a privileged insight into one unique project and the chemistry that made it possible'.  In a more modest way, of course, that was what I had tried to do for the projects visited in Creating Chances.

 

For information about the Gulbenkian Foundation's activities and publications, visit www.gulbenkian.org.uk.  Thanks are due to the Foundation for supplying this publication in colour with all the wonderful pictures that the gifted photographer Adrian Fisk made for us.
 
Creating Chances.pdf Download this file

 

 

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Fri, 29 Jan 2010 13:32:00 -0800 Youth Peer to Peer http://richardings.posterous.com/arts-and-young-people-at-risk-0 http://richardings.posterous.com/arts-and-young-people-at-risk-0

Youth Peer to Peer was commissioned as one of four case studies looking at models of engagement in education, published as a pack by Creative Partnerships London North as virtually its last act before the national restructure of the whole CP programme.  My brief was to look at how one particular school addressed 'youth voice' - and at how young people might work together as a supportive learning community.  The project lent itself to easy metaphors, as it involved aerial artists and young people 'learning to fly', but the difficult issues that were raised about achieving a genuinely equal dialogue between adults in power and young students took the study beyond such platitudes.  There are packs still around, apparently, but you can download my case study here or the whole range from http://www.anewdirection.org.uk/.  A New Direction now runs Creative Partnerships and a number of other programmes in London aimed at developing creative approaches to teaching and learning, building young people's aspirations and connecting them to the city and the opportunities it offers.

 

Youth Peer to Peer.pdf Download this file

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Fri, 29 Jan 2010 12:17:00 -0800 Arts and young people at risk http://richardings.posterous.com/arts-and-young-people-at-risk http://richardings.posterous.com/arts-and-young-people-at-risk
As an independent consultant working to commission, my involvement in actual policy making is at most tangential and my influence on practice, if any, is hard to quantify though I naturally hope that what I write will make some kind of difference.  A lot of my work over recent years has been documenting and evaluating arts interventions with young people at risk in some way - perhaps excluded from school or on the way to or from custody - and in 2005/06 I had the opportunity to work with Arts Council England on a policy document on the arts and young people at risk of (re)offending.  Nikki Crane, then the Head of Social Inclusion at ACE, was the driving force behind the strategy, which arose from the partnership she had forged with the Youth Justice Board, and we canvassed opinion across the arts and criminal justice sector in creating the text which you can download here.  The practical result of the publication was a three-year national programme of funded arts work with young offenders and those at risk.  The sequel publication was to have been a collection of case studies about the work but by the time I had cleared the decks to write it, the moment had passed and the Social Inclusion Unit at the Arts Council had vanished.  However, I still have tapescripts of my interviews with artists and arts organisations working in the field and with the criminal justice professionals involved, which I hope one day will see the light of day in some useful form.

 

Arts and young people at risk.pdf Download this file

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Wed, 20 Jan 2010 05:47:00 -0800 From the favela to our manor http://richardings.posterous.com/from-the-favela-to-our-manor http://richardings.posterous.com/from-the-favela-to-our-manor

I was commissioned by People's Palace Projects to write a report on the first major visit to the UK by AfroReggae, a cultural organisation from Brazil that has now developed an ongoing creative relationship with venues, artists and arts workers here.  From the favela to our manor is subtitled Translating AfroReggae and that is what I attempted to do - to pick out the implications of an international intervention in arts work and, specifically, to examine the impact of this company's work with young people at risk in the inner city in London and Manchester.  Prior to its visit, I was lucky enough to be able to meet AfroReggae on its own territory - the favelas of Rio de Janeiro - though that 'territory', of course is notoriously contested by murderous rival drug factions.  That is where my narrative begins.  It ends with this prophetic remark from percussionist Altair Martins, setting the agenda for what is now taking place:

To reach a hundred young people, you start by working with two and they will carry on the work for you.  I didn’t know any of you before I got here but I tried to bring you the energy that I have.  And the energy I gave you, you multiplied it and passed it back to me.  Each of us can pass these ideas on to two other people; those two people to four others; those four to eight more - and it will never stop.  This energy has to be multiplied.

For the latest on AfroReggae's work, including touring, get Google to translate its home site at www.afroreggae.org.br - and catch up with its partnership work here at www.favelatotheworld.org.  For more information on the work of People's Palace Projects, visit www.peoplespalace.org.uk and www.amazonia-london.com.

  

From the favela.pdf Download this file

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Wed, 16 Dec 2009 06:34:00 -0800 The Inventive Answer http://richardings.posterous.com/the-inventive-answer http://richardings.posterous.com/the-inventive-answer
It is not often you have carte-blanche to write about creativity, but I was commissioned a couple of years back by Rick Hall to write a 'think piece' on the conditions for creativity for young people.  The Inventive Answer was my response.  It can be downloaded here but its other natural home is at Ignite!, an organisation which my piece played a modest part in kickstarting, and which is now breaking ever more exciting new ground in exploring the creative potential of what used to be called 'yoof'.  If you want to learn more about Ignite's work, visit www.ignitefutures.org.uk.



The Inventive Answer - Ignite.pdf Download this file

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Tue, 15 Dec 2009 08:39:00 -0800 A case worth studying http://richardings.posterous.com/a-case-worth-studying http://richardings.posterous.com/a-case-worth-studying

Getting young people actively engaged in the transformation of their communities into happy, thriving, sustainable places in which to live and work are the core aims of government policies on youth, on education and on regeneration.  Fundamental: Architectural Inclusion has been doing this for five years with a unique project: the Architecture Crew.

 

Architecture Crew.pdf Download this file

The Architecture Crew is the first of its kind - a youth architecture forum that has led the field in sustained youth engagement in the built environment since its establishment in 2004.  Set up to provide teenagers in Newham in East London with the opportunity to come together and express their views about regeneration and as it affects their own borough, it has stimulated young people's interest in their environment and built the self-confidence they need to make their voice heard in their own community  - and listened to by professionals in the wider world of architecture and regeneration.

Although composed of 13-19 year olds, the Crew's professionalism and accumulated knowledge has given it a substantial and growing role in local, regional and national debates around regeneration and the way that local people should be consulted about changes to their environment.  The Architecture Crew provides a viable model and inspiration for developing 'architectural inclusion' youth projects across the country.

Fundamental commissioned me to write the case study, which you can download here.  If you want a hard copy of this beautifully illustrated and designed publication, write to Jane Leighton, Director, Fundamental: Architectural Inclusion, 379/381 High Street, London E15 4QZ or email jane@fundamental.uk.net.  You can also see more of Fundamental's work at www.fundamental.uk.net

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