Curious Project 6

In the context of working with children & young people Curious Project 6 sees this in its broadest sense:

Physical: The involvement of young people in the development and delivery of their physical environments. for example, designing parks, public art, environmental improvements

Social: The involvement of young people in exploring community and issues affecting communities, what makes a place.

Both these elements will provide a number of outcomes for young people and opportunities for partner to engage and create collaborations.

There are a number of opportunities to volunteer in regeneration activity and in particular creative activity. With the right checks including CRB (A simple process to ensure young people are safe in the hands of the people working with them), you will be welcomed into these opportunities. Working with artists may help you to further develop you own creative skills and the ability to use creativity to engage others, you may want to help out with a local group. You can learn and host of new skills which may lead onto a new career path. Many of the professionals working in creative fields all started by volunteering.

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With in your local authority area there are a number of partners who have a role to play with in the regeneration process and involving young people in some form will be part of their remit. Below is a list and brief explanation of the their role:

• Curious Minds delivers the creative Partnership program for Lancashire, Blackburn with Darwen, Blackpool, Merseyside, Halton and Cheshire. They currently work with over 170 schools connecting creative practitioners with teachers and pupils to develop long-term programmes of creative teaching and learning.
• Arts Development Officers ADO’s are based within local authorities and support the use of creative methods of delivery and have experience in developing funding bids, working with artists and linking their core program with other colleagues with in the local authority. If you have a project idea, your local ADO will be happy to discuss your ideas. Not all local authorities have ADO’s in place and some are based in leisure trusts that work in partnership with the local authority. ADO’s are support by a national body called the Arts Council England, the North West office based in the Manchester. Areas with in Lancashire County Council also have the support of a County Arts Unit with a team of officers with areas of focus including young people & regeneration.
• Pennine Lancashire has a number of Arts Organisations who deliver a wide variety of creative projects across the region and would also help in the development of projects. A number of freelance artists working across the northwest region also work as individuals not directly linked with organisations. Working with an individual artist can provide a bespoke approach working with artists who specialise in engagement in their practice.
• Regeneration Officers. These can include a number of roles including Housing Market Renewal co-ordinators, Planning officers and Policy makers. Based with in Local Authorities these officers deal with the day-to-day developments in the regeneration areas and need to engage the community throughout the process.
• Neighbourhood & community engagement managers. These roles differ from area to area. In some localities both roles exist and some just have a neighbourhood manager. Community development managers are grass roots workers identifying gaps in service provision in the neighbourhood management areas, neighbourhood managers then work with the service providers to look at ways of changing the way services are delivered to meet local needs.
• Young People’s Service Each local authority has a youth service provision and your school may already have links to the service working in the area. Youth Workers often have contacts and link with other agencies working on the ground and can support work both formally through and school and informally through other provision like youth clubs.
• Young Lancashire: support and deliver a number of projects within the voluntary youth work sector and have contacts for groups and projects in your local area.
• There are also a number of other local and regional organisation e.g., Groundwork Pennine Lancashire all of who can be found through this site.

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This the most challenging element of developing many project ideas. The aim of this website is to build a body of evidence to support more sustainable engagement of young people in regeneration as funding stream continue to be short term. In developing a wide variety of partners from the outset the opportunities for funding increases as partnership working strengthens any potential bid and also unlocks and pools resources available through your new partners. For example youth workers in the voluntary sector can access funds a school may not be able to which could involve working within an informal and formal context. Regeneration officers will have funds to look at consultation, which could be unlocked and used in a more creative way to engage young people.

Engaging young people early in the process will also strengthen your bid, as many funders looking at projects involving young people need to see a level of consultation prior to the application. This is, as the framework is advocating, good practice for a successful project and time needs to be planned for this part of the process. Using creativity opens other opportunities for funding and are included in the list of the funding streams:

Register and visit the Funding section to find out what is available

There are a number of ways to know you have been successful from formal attainment in school to the personal stories of how young people have moved on through the process of engagement. The trick is to embed systems to capture the evidence, using clear objectives and reflecting through out the journey using interesting ways to collect the information.

Register and see our ‘how to…page for ideas