What? | Teacher | Curious Project 6

Teacher

What are the opportunities to involve my pupils in local regeneration?

There are regeneration opportunities happening in a whole host of areas across Pennine Lancashire. Some of these are in targeted areas as part of the Housing Market Renewal Program led by the local authorities and Regenerate Pennine Lancashire and some are opportunities can be found local towns and villages, for example designing a new park or getting involved in clean up activities.

Please visit the ‘About’ to find out more about Regenerate Pennine Lancashire (formally Elevate East lancashire)

This programs will create a number of opportunities over the next 10/15 years at a number of different levels and could include:

Getting involved in regeneration projects in your schools catchment area that are already planned or being planned.
Development of curriculum links to regeneration project.
Opportunities to facilitate the expression of pupils thoughts, ideas and opinions into processes at a local, regional and national level, developing a deeper understanding of the role they can play as young people in the regeneration of their neighbourhoods.
Develop stronger community links with partners working in your schools community.
Work with creative practitioners on a regional, national and international level.
Raise pupil attainment through ‘real’ teaching & learning opportunities on your doorstep.
Raise the aspiration of pupils to vision a community for them to be proud to live in the future.

Building schools for the Future offers a direct opportunity to involve pupils and teaching staff in the development of new and exciting teaching & learning spaces. If your school is going to be involved or already is involved in BSF development, think about the possible opportunities to utilise this process to engage your pupils, where possible early on the process.

Register and visit the resource section for more information.

What do you mean by regeneration & renewal?

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.

How can these opportunities provide teaching & learning in the curriculum?

The first step is making links to the key partners who can help develop project opportunities. Register yourself and connect to others. Once you have made the connections, explorations of each other’s needs, will establish what appropriate links can be created. Register to se case studies of projects developed through creative partnerships in schools.

Regeneration activity in your area provides an opportunity to link your school to the community it serves. Young people need to be at heart of making decisions which will affect the communities they will eventually live and bring up their own families. Issues listed below provide opportunities for exploration in subject areas through ‘real’ examples on their doorstep:

Community cohesion and community identity
Economic potential of their neighbourhoods
Development of services and facilitates in their neighbourhoods
Opportunities to learn from other professionals working in their neighbourhoods e.g. planners, architects, artists and community workers.

Finding the time to find out what is happening within the community around your school will open up a number of new opportunities. Often projects are developed outside of curriculum time, pulling pupils off timetable, disrupting progress. If you are interested in getting your pupils and school involved, early planning can help to incorporate projects into curriculum time.

Who do I contact to participate in these opportunities or develop a project?

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.

Register to view the directory in I’m looking for and make new contacts.

What role can creativity play in these opportunities?

Working in a creative way with practitioners like, for example artists, allow young people to take a journey of exploration in relation to an area of regeneration & renewal. Register to access the case studies. These can include expressing their hopes and aspirations of a neighbourhood they would want to live in through film or performance or really understanding the process of developing a piece of open space through working with architects and planners. The creative mechanisms allow young people to share their voice in arenas, which aren’t particularly youth friendly, such as council meeting and forums. Ultimately working more closely with partners to look at how the process of engaging young people in a meaningful way will offer a unique perspective, which will create a more understood and valued product.

“Creativity develops the capacity to imagine the world differently. We all need an ability not just to cope with change but also to positively thrive on it and engineer it for ourselves”.

Working alongside creative practitioners gives teachers an opportunity to take risks, develop new techniques and engage with pupils in an alternative way. Using local regeneration projects as teaching and learning subject matter can increase the wider knowledge of the backgrounds of your schools pupils, particularly if you don’t live in your teaching area.

How do I fund these opportunities?

This the most challenging element of developing many project ideas particularly for the formal sector. 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

What support or training can I access in this area of work?

Curious Project 6 will also be developing a training program linked directly to this area of work and through the website opportunities will become available.

Register and look out for training opportunities and links to other organisations you can support this

Use the forum to let us know of any training you feel you or colleagues could benefit. Maybe this is an area of work you would like to develop as a lead worker in your district?

How do I know if it has been successful?

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

Curious Project 6