Resources

When Find Your Talent was launched last October, it met with a sceptical response from those critical of previous Government attempts to engage young people with culture. But six months down the line, there are signs that some of its ambitions are starting to bear fruit.

The town of Folkestone is currently being transformed into a haven for the visual and performing arts. Part of this revival is down to a new ‘Creative Quarter’ which contains a mix of arts venues, educational facilities and ‘live-work’ spaces rented out, on long leases and modest rents (courtesy of Roger De Haan, heir to the Saga Holidays fortune), to professional artists. The area is also home to a new £4.4m theatre and recently hosted a music festival. This regeneration plan is the brainchild of local charity the Creative Foundation, which aims to exploit the momentum generated by the long-awaited arrival of a high-speed rail link to St Pancras this December, and reclaim the town’s status as a tourist destination.

All of which makes it a fitting home to one of ten ‘pathfinders’ for Find Your Talent – the latest phase in the Government’s strategy to give all young people access to five hours of high-quality culture a week. By March 2011, £1.2m will have been invested to bring the arts to all corners of the sprawling Shepway district. It aims to give children and young people the chance to try out different cultural and creative activities, and unlock untapped potential they may have as artists or performers.

Douglas Noble, Project Director of Shepway Find Your Talent, spells out his plans: “The first strand is regeneration of the built environment – buying old buildings and doing them up. The next is managing them and offering them up to creative activities. That leads into the third, which is the people who make that happen.”

‘FIND YOUR TALENT’ GIVES YOUNG PEOPLE THE CHANCE TO TRY OUT DIFFERENT CULTURAL AND CREATIVE ACTIVITIES, AND UNLOCK UNTAPPED POTENTIAL THEY MAY HAVE AS ARTISTS OR PERFORMERS

Those ‘people’ are, increasingly, the children and teenagers who are the focus of FYT. Douglas enthuses: “Find Your Talent has the opportunity to build links between those spaces, those activities, and young people, and explain to them that’s something they can be part of – and eventually be leaders of.”

Though keen to avoid being pessimistic about the ability to engage children from poorer and ethnically diverse backgrounds, he identifies “pockets of deprivation” in parts of Shepway as an issue facing FYT, as it extends its tendrils beyond traditional audiences. According to recent Government surveys, five of the district’s 24 electoral wards are among the worst for child poverty in England. Hardly surprising if some families see the arts as “a bit other”, as Douglas puts it (echoing Culture Secretary Andy Burnham’s sentiments when he contrasted the enthusiasm with which some people embrace sport with their suspicion of high culture). “I’ve never had someone say that to me,” says Douglas, “but I believe it’s true. But we don’t want to judge that: we want to make a journey together.”

The journey so far has involved several grassroots initiatives, beginning with a ‘cultural audit’ designed to find out what cultural activities youngsters were already experiencing – and where they felt the gaps lay. Some 14,000 school pupils were handed sheets of paper and stickers and asked to produce their own ‘cultural profiles’, pre-FYT. By Christmas 2009 there should be a website to which children can log in to update their profiles as their cultural parameters widen.

A programme of residencies by artists - ranging from film-makers to illustrators – is planned in local schools. Dubbed Connect, it aims to produce collaborative work with pupils based around the National Curriculum. Moreover, the year FYT ends (2011) coincides with the next Folkestone Triennial and FYT’s involvement, like all its other initiatives, is being steered by a project advisory group comprising 11 8-18 year-olds.

Helping to coordinate this group is Dan Evans, 19, a prodigious dancer who also juggles duties as a teaching assistant for children with learning difficulties at Brockhill Park Performing Arts College in Hythe with FYT dance workshops for Year 5 pupils at primary schools across Shepway. When asked for his views on what FYT might accomplish, he is keen to stress that adults can learn as much about culture from children as the reverse: “Culture is defined by every individual. Adults telling children what it is doesn’t work.” He continues: “I have friends who’ve been offered places to study contemporary dance at dance school, but only on condition that they complete foundation years in ballet. Why can’t they study break-dancing?”

Shepway’s approach to FYT is, by turns, similar to and different from those of other pathfinders. In Liverpool, fresh from its stint as European Capital of Culture, a scheme called Great Expectations is bussing children from more deprived areas into the city’s major museums, while in Telford and Wrekin taster sessions in drama, dance and visual arts are being held for toddlers and teenage mothers. The emphasis in Leeds is on linking together numerous arts activities already in place across the city. In other areas, cultural infrastructures need to be established for the first time.

“CULTURE IS DEFINED BY EVERY INDIVIDUAL. ADULTS TELLING CHILDREN WHAT IT IS DOESN’T WORK”

One of these is North Somerset, where Liz Smith, Head of Learning at the National Portrait Gallery, is helping to devise ways of recruiting indigenous artists to the cause. The project compliments the NPG’s own commitment to Strategic Commissioning – the umbrella term for museums’ educational outreach work which last year received another £13m Whitehall boost. “The area hasn’t got a cultural infrastructure like Bristol has, though Bristol is nearby. Its pathfinder has discovered there’s a large community of artists living and working in the area and it wants to commission them to work with young people, to improve engagement in culture,” she explains.

Ideas being floated by the North Somerset pathfinder – whose focus is ‘identity’ - include inviting youngsters to the NPG to participate in activities related to portraiture, and loaning high-quality prints of works in its collection for exhibitions in the district. In the long run, the Gallery hopes to contribute to the sustainability of FYT by producing teaching materials for schools.

Meanwhile, Jude Kelly, Artistic Director of the South Bank Centre, is hosting a three-day pathfinders’ networking event this summer: “Since the South Bank is a wonderful complex of different art forms, small and large, national and international, we’re inviting all the programmes, to get the young people to know the Centre. It should be a sort of national jigsaw puzzle that gives them a sense of what’s going on around the country.”

“EVEN IF YOU HAVE A DEEP INTEREST IN OPERA OR HIP-HOP, IT’S IMPORTANT YOU ENGAGE WITH DIFFERENT CULTURAL FORMS”

But what will happen when the pathfinders end? Will we be any nearer achieving those elusive five weekly hours of culture, and what might take its place at a national level? Joe Hallgarten, Director of Learning at Creativity, Culture and Education (CCE), the organisation steering FYT at a national level, says: “Pathfinders are there to explore what’s needed to develop a national offer – that doesn’t mean they’ll continue or be rolled out. The important thing is we’re asking young people to co-design this programme at every level. The aspiration of five hours a week remains, but the main aim is to give a broad cultural offering to every child. Even if you have a deep interest in opera or hip-hop, it’s important you engage with different cultural forms.”

One person already benefiting is Shepway FYT advisory group member Bradley Gonsalves, 13, a pupil at the Folkestone Academy which, buoyed by a £2m donation from De Haan, occupies a futuristic £40m building on the town’s outskirts. “We were taken to Tate Modern. I’d never been to a big art gallery like that before - there’s nothing like that in Folkestone,” he says. “Find Your Talent is getting these big resources involved, and telling us culture is something you need to improve your life.” Bradley believes Shepway deserves similar venues of its own: “A permanent place as big as this school for young people to go and be creative would be something people would see and think, ‘OK, we’ve got that, so that means we can do this too’. It would be like a tree with branches coming out of it, and those branches would be ideas.” Evidently Find Your Talent is already having an impact on some young people.

For more information about Find Your Talent, visit www.findyourtalent.org.

top of page