Key Learnings

 

What did we Deliver, What did we Learn?

This project was a collaboration between Newham based youth organisation Be Heard As One and the foundation of the celebrated photographic archive and agency Magnum Photos. The partners worked with SEEit Working Trust and Taking

Shape to undertake “Rules of Engagement Learning - RoEL©” sessions  that were developed to provide a framework for youth workers and arts organisations to co-design and co-deliver more meaningful cultural engagement programmes for the young people they work with. SEEit Working Trust has designed RoEL© sessions, facilitated by youth workers, around 7 themes: Knowledge; Access; Engagement; Participation; Learning; Progression and Legacy.

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Over 8 sessions, the team worked with young people who live in the historically underserved Manor Park area using photography and a range of storytelling tools to explore, publish and exhibit stories about their life experiences and perspectives. The programme built vocational skills and career progression pathways as well as supporting creativity, confidence and wellbeing through the creation and presentation of these stories.

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Impact Across the Project

The project created opportunities for the young people to:

• Feel seen, heard and valued

• Express issues that are impacting them

• Hear from the older generation about their lives and challenges they have experienced (including poverty, knife crime and incarceration)

• Meet other young people

• Play and have fun (something that was flagged in testimonies as being lacking in the young peoples lives)

• Be part of a collective creating a project together (again something that was identified in testimonies as lacking for young people)

• Learn new skills

• Hear about training and career opportunities

• Access to arts organisations and cultural institutions

• Deeper relationships with mentors through working on a creative, storytelling project

• Progression pathways for their further education and careers through the  continuation of the project

 

The project created opportunities for the youth workers to:

• Express issues that have impacted their lives and their work (including the care system, institutional racism, incarceration, gangs and knife crime)

• create a different space in which to hear from the younger generation about their lives and challenges, as well as their ideas on possible contributing factors and solutions

• Learn new skills (Rules of Engagement Learning and creative skills) 

• Hear about training and career opportunities for themselves and the young people they work with

• Access to arts organisations and cultural institutions - building trust and relationships with creatives, and gaining creative experiences, to use in supporting young people

 

The project created opportunities for the researchers (SEEit Working Trust andTaking Shape) to:

• Learn vital information about implementing the RoEL framework, and what needed to be developed/changed in order to optimise the impact of the approach in terms of individual, organisation and sector learning. “Legacy” was added to the session themes to explore the wider impact of the project in addition to the impact on the individual - on the family, community, social services, the youth sector, the creative sector and the funder. And this will be added to the RoEL evidence hub for grassroots access as well as to inform, influence and support policy agenda, service design and investment choice.

• It was also identified that key competencies that are inherent in youth work link to WRYSE competencies that the creative/cultural industry value above technical skills when recruiting young people, and we will add this to the RoEL sessions’ project learning theme to ensure the project evaluation evidences these competences within it’s outcomes – which the youth can then evidence in CV writing and interviews.

 

The project created opportunities for the arts organisation to learn:

• The Rules of Engagement Learning approach and can now input these into future work.

• The importance of cultural programming by and for people with lived experience.

• The importance of having people in your team who have a similar lived experience as the participants

• The importance of play and fun in collaborative projects

• The richness and power that is possible in collaboration, all parties bring their lived experience, connections, ideas, skills and more

• The impact that creativity, storytelling and collaboration can have on a person’s mental health and sense of community.

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