Issue

The cultural/creative sector currently has a desire to diversify its workforce, audience and supporters, but not the necessary means or knowledge.  There is, therefore, a real momentum to be innovative in approaches to widening cultural engagement and employment from less advantaged communities. With RoEL© our aim is not just engaging young people in culture, but widening interest in creative careers.  

 

We need to ensure they have the skills, aspiration and support to achieve, and that the sector has the understanding to design inclusive progression pathways that these young people can excel in.  It is therefore important for us to work with mainstream partners so we can directly connect the youth to the opportunities provided, so they can in turn use their own experiences in their creative production for a more diverse sector. This will happen by better connecting youth workers and creatives.  

 

There is an opportunity for us to influence the cultural/creative sector to: optimise the economic, well-being and social change impact of the current desire to diversify the sector; directly connect the sector to youth workers for mutual access, engagement and progression; collaboratively co-create the cultural offer and innovative ways of working; and provide information for our projects, partners, policy makers and social investors for sustainable social change.

 

What Informed our Approach

Informed by understanding Youth Worker and Creatives lived experience, conducting grass-roots community research, through our pilots funded by Arts Council England (ACE), and the current thinking of strategic organisations, we used systems thinking to collaboratively develop the RoEL© and Training the Trainer sessions, to inform, influence and support both sectors' future plans to address challenges they face eg: ACE’s Lets Create strategy 2021/22; ACE National Lottery Programme 2022; ACE Digital Culture Network launched 2020; Durham Commission on Creativity & Education’s First Report 2019 & Second Report 2021; National Youth Agency Curriculum 2020; London Youth’s Youth Creators – launching 2022; Centre for Youth Impact and their Outcomes Framework 2019; and strategies from Film London and Equal Access Network, ScreenSkills, BFI, Crafts Council, and the British Fashion Council. 

​

“As an artist you may have a genuine passion for engaging diverse individual groups but don't have the experience, confidence or knowledge to do so. For many, youth are often deemed as intimidating or challenging and this project would help breakdown these perceptions.  Youth will benefit in the long run as we'd start to see artists and youth workers adopt a more robust joined-up approach to youth work, youth projects and youth services. For those who don't work with youth on a day to day basis, this will also help better prepare and equip them with the necessary tools and help better prepare them for working with Youth Workers as Key Gatekeepers for more rewarding and impactful projects.” Local Creative 

 

“I think it's needed, and important especially because it will empower the youth workers and educate others on the value, power, skills, need, impact and intricacy of youth work. In my experience I've learned that youth workers enjoy and deeply connect with what they do but as a result of society not appreciating their job/profession, they start to inhibit/develop a 'disclosed power' when approached by others.  They only use their power when supporting young people instead of using it universally amongst others - such as artists - to promote understanding and progression/change for all. The better we empower the youth workers, the better the youth become empowered, the better youth empower their families, and the better our communities become, resulting in a positive societal shift.” Local Youth Worker

 

“The link with community-based individuals & organisations is most definitely a direction we all share very strongly here at FFL and am particular aware of the key role of local gate-keeper.  Youth workers in particular was an position we stressed again & again to cultural institutions… Access on both sides is not straight forward and whilst a few made some individual efforts there is little avail framework for making and developing those relationship so really excited to read about the Rules of Engagement Learning© development” Ashton Mullins, Foundation for Future London​

​

The Project

​Rules of Engagement Learning© aimed to develop a delivery framework that better connected youth workers and creatives, for more meaningful cultural engagement in marginalised communities.  What we have developed is a different way of working – an approach that can be adopted by industries in the cultural/creative sector as well as youth and education sectors for real social development and a more inclusive sector.  This can be achieved by the sessions initially creating change in individuals, taking their learning back to their organisations, then those organisations informing industry change, leading to sector change.  The response has been overwhelmingly positive and we are planning a RoEL© sessions pilot in 2023, a case study pilot working with Be Heard As One and Magnum Photos, as well as developing a Screen Industry pilot with 60FortyFilms, Taking Shape and Screen Skills.

 

RoEL© is an approach with sessions covering 6 themes, focused around a funded project: Knowledge; Access; Engagement; Participation; Learning; Progression.​​​

​

We delivered

SEEit Working Trust delivered c 125 days of research and development which included 72 learning sessions.  We collaborated with 41 individual youth workers, creatives and contributors, and worked/talked with 32 organisations (10 creative, 11 youth and 11 “other” – which included funders, academics and business development incl Magnum Photos; Taking Shape Association; Ruff Sqwad Arts Foundation; Spotlight; Queen Mary University; FFL; Be Heard As One; Rich Mix; Karen Anderson; Good Growth Hub & A New Direction; and Barbican/GSMD Community Impact Collective).  

​​

Key creative learning for creatives:

• Building a network of engaged youth workers and access to marginalised communities

• Collaborating and building relationships with youth workers for more inclusive and impactful youth projects and career development/recruitment activities – working with the youth worker throughout the project process and treating them more like teachers for prep, support during the project and post-project work

• Integrating the role of the youth worker in planning careers activity, projects and fundraising (to value youth workers and inform funders of the issues), to support access, engagement, retention and progression

• Co-creating the cultural offer

• Ripple effect impact: Creatives CPD – if they are more aware of youth work issues and better connected to youth sector it will influence on them, the organisations they work with (large or small eg recruitment or project/venue food and tix) and this will influence the learning of the young person and the outcomes achieved by the individual and community.

 

Key creative learning for youth workers:

• Building high quality creative networks to access mainstream resources, opportunities and knowledge for the youth

• Collaborating with and building relationships with creatives for more inclusive and impactful projects – working with creatives throughout the process to be able to understand the aims, the process and the progression, so whether there is a one-off project or a longer-term relationship with a creative organisation (eg programmes of work or career development/(self)employment recruitment) they can ensure all opportunities are optimised

• Mainstreaming the use of arts, culture and creativity, and the opportunities offered by the cultural/creative sector, in youth work and enabling youth workers to knowledgeably plan their youth programming

• Co-creating the cultural offer

• Ripple effect impact: Youth worker CPD – additional income opportunities support youth worker social mobility, and if they are more creative it helps them in their life and their youth work practices, and this has an enormous influence on the learning and social mobility of the young person and the outcomes achieved by the individual and community.

​

Development 

We are in discussions to identify and develop strategic collaborations with the following types of organisations for the next phase – we seek to embed the RoEL© approach in individuals, organisations, industries and the sector rather than create a new organisation – creatively using existing resources: 

• Digital – for our Alumni Digital support Network

• Monitoring Evaluation Learning & Impact (MELI)

• Training – to support the training the trainer and the RoEL© sessions

• Funders – the RoEL© sessions start with the Funded project – hopefully initially starting with conversations with FFL and ACE

• Industry leads – to develop relationships similar to 60Forty Films and Screen Skills on industry models and pilots

• Schools/education organisation – RoEL© supports teachers and schools in the classroom and in careers development, because youth workers support young people, their domestic relationships, and those in schools and services - and we need to create more joint thinking and approaches to optimise impact​

 

Funders as the key starting point the RoEL© process has been identified so that there is a focus to the sessions rather than participants having to contemplate overwhelming information.  It provides a real-life example of the co-creating process, and the delivery of the project at the end of the sessions enables a natural progression pathway.  

 

The addition of Schools/teachers in the ToC relating to careers and supporting more equitable access to quality education has been an additional natural outcome that we want to develop in the next phase.  This has come out of some impact work with a youth project in a Newham school

 

We started discussions with Spotlight and Queen Mary University around how we could collaborate.  They had Arts Council funding for a project to explore “What is Creative Youthwork” and we want to explore funding collaborations rather than isolated projects.  We have also started discussions with Barbican/GSMD & Community Impact Collective to see how we can work together in the future.

 

Kevin Stuart, CEO Taking Shape Association, and Youth Worker

“For me, the reason why RoEL© is so important (in my eyes) is because it will focus on the people or organisations that actually want to make change and doing the work with the people that are on the ground (grassroots). This will mean that the funding will go to the people that need the most help which is the community and there alike. This has the capability of adapting the way youth workers are seen in this industry and for creatives to make a huge impact in the way they use their skills to work with those who need it most. I am committed to this.” 

 

Shannon Ghannam, Global Education Director, Magnum Photos (Currently seconded to the Magnum Photos Foundation, UK and the Peter Marlow Foundation) – and also part of the FFL storytelling activity and will be speaking about working with SEEit Working Trust on the RoEL© project:

"The best outcome out of my experience of the Co-Lab sessions has been meeting Sian and hearing about her research and the Rules of Engagement. Sian has an incredible ability to see the bigger picture, to see interconnected systems and look for ways to plot a path through for the greatest, long term impact for young people. I love that I can offer Sian the perspective of a larger arts organisation and that I can connect her with my industry network. Sian has connected me with her network of youth workers and we are already developing a project together. This outcome thanks to FFL connecting us is game changing for my work and the industry. I am thrilled to be a part of it and to see this outcome from these sessions, I think it points to us all being on the right track!"​

​​

Screen RoELs

Alongside the RoEL© Sessions, we also developed a RoEL© Creative Careers Theory of Change framework.  We collaborated with 60Forty Films on a non-institutional Creative Inclusion Framework for the Screen Industry, and a RoEL© Screen Industry pilot with 60Forty Films and Taking Shape – to deliver with Screen Skills 2023

​

​

​

​

​​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​​