Curious Minds

Pendle Vale Wins Regional Philip Lawrence Award

This Curious Minds PREVENT initiative delivered in partnership with Lancashire Police at Pendle Vale College has been successful as North West regional winners for the Philip Lawrence Award. Nominated by the supporting officer Lindsay Pickard the group narrowly missed out on the final 8 for the national award. This comes at a time when funding secured by the young people was taken back as part of the cuts and will give the group a boost. The project is currently awaiting the results of another bid to produce the card game created during the project, which will be sent to a waiting list of 50 organisations. Curious Minds managed the project in partnership with Student Support Worker Samina Kauser at Pendle Vale College, Lancashire Police and creative Practitioners Sharon Connery and Seal Films.

"Congratulations! It’s a fantastic achievement to be recognised as one of the best projects in your region, and testament to the passion and commitment of the young people who are making a difference in the community. Our youth judging panel were responsible for choosing the regional finalists from over 200 entries received this year, which was not an easy job! They were particularly impressed by your project and commented that it was challenging the false idea of terrorism and actively trying to change it and admired how the young people are wanting to engage with wider community." - Philip Lawrence Awards Network Team

 

Philip Lawrence Award for Pendle Vale College Pod Cast from Curious Project 6 on Vimeo.

This project brought together a diverse group of young people within Pendle Vale College, Nelson.

The group of young people all demonstrated leadership potential throughout the life of the project. Initially a youth worker who ensured that the participants took ownership of the project throughout facilitated the work. The final toolkit was designed by young people for young people, the intention of the group was to use the ‘card game’ with peers in various settings to assist other young people to gain an understanding of violent extremism and help prevent it. This game will also be used to help teachers begin conversations around this theme.

The group worked together to challenge each other’s understanding of violent extremism and explore other controversial issues in an appropriate and critical manner. Together they responded appropriately to current events and news articles that impacted them and their communities. The young people looked at the misconceptions that were often globally viewed, though particularly within the school community. They worked together to develop understanding of their own identities and cultural diversity.

Initially the young people had little or no understanding of the many forms of extremism, not just violent extremism. Some of the young people who were Muslim, honestly and openly expressed their views, thoughts and feelings with the group, and also brought things to the group that they thought to be fact, but when further explored by the group together found them to be conjecture or conspiracy theory often ‘hyped’ by the media or internet sites.

The general consensus from the group was that they had never been given the opportunity to hold these types of conversations, where they could questions issues, views and find facts. This project allowed young people ‘scratch the surface’ of a very sensitive subject, that many young people know little about. They wanted like to find out further facts, in a safe and stimulating environment.

Most of the young people felt that they had had the opportunity to learn something that they did not know previously, meet other young people who they would not normally mix with and get their point over in a non-confrontational manner and be challenged appropriately. This project gave consent for all of the above to happen, and the group wish to take this forward to other colleges, schools also youth and community centres

Written by Sharon Connery