News and Blog – Page 2 – Southampton Cultural Education Partnership

Creative Health and the Role of Arts Organisations in Health and Wellbeing

By Rosanna Sloan

Rosanna is the Interim CEO at The Arts Development Company and the SCEP Steering Group lead for Health and Wellbeing.

Creative Health is the practice of using culture and creativity to improve people’s health, wellbeing, and quality of life. You may have heard of dance classes for those with Parkinson’s disease or music therapy for dementia patients, but Creative Health supports people of all ages. Many cultural projects for children and young people have direct or indirect benefits to their health and wellbeing, and so, you may be working in Creative Health without even realising.

“When we remember the WHO definition of health, which states that health is more than merely the absence of disease and infirmity, but the attainment of the highest level of physical, mental and social well-being, then the value of the arts becomes apparent.”
WHO Arts & Health Lead, Christopher Bailey

We are currently facing a mental health crisis for children and young people.

It is a sobering statistic that there is a 50% increase in the likelihood of a young person having a mental health problem. 50%. The effects of the pandemic, exam pressure, social media and so on are having a tangible impact on the wellbeing of young people. It is concerning that 34% of young people who get referred to the NHS for treatment are not accepted. Our health facilities are struggling, and this is where the arts can help.

Social Prescribing

Social prescribing is when an activity or service is ‘prescribed’ instead of, or in addition to, medication. It is an area that needs further demystifying for arts organisations. There are, in some areas, dedicated Social Prescriber or Link Worker roles that prescribe activity to support a patient’s recovery.

“Our measures should reflect this holistic approach, focusing not solely on reduction of symptoms but on how the arts may help us cope, achieve our potential, be productive, and active members of a community.”
WHO Arts & Health Lead, Christopher Bailey

What I am seeing as I delve further into the research and on the ground delivery of Creative Health, is that these two distinct sectors need a translator to bridge the communication void between them. The two sectors use different terminology and the funding systems behind creative health from the healthcare sector are not clear. However, there are organisations that are trying to support this, including the organisation I work for The Arts Development Company.

Creative Health is—as demonstrated across many research papers—a highly successful and cost-effective way to improve a person’s health. It allows people to live happier, longer, more fulfilled lives, which in turn reduces strain on healthcare services. And so, it is an area that more arts organisations need to tap into.

What can we do?

As arts budgets are being reduced, we need to tap into the funding streams for Creative Health and identify projects that deliver health benefits for its participants. In our SCEP newsletters, we already see many examples of our members working in this area, but how can more of us get involved?

“We know that time is an important factor in establishing good programmes, so we must work together as a sector to ensure our services have longevity.”

We need to read up and be engaged in the conversations and research papers around Creative Health. We need to find a way to collaborate with health services and each other to create multi-year projects that are effective and provide stability for those that need them. Too often, wonderful projects happen, they support their participants for a short time, and then a lack of funding spells the end of all that work. We know that time is an important factor in establishing good programmes, so we must work together as a sector to ensure our services have longevity.

In addition to this, we should keep our eyes open to examples of best practice for people of all ages and question the health outcomes of our projects so we can provide data for future potential funders. We should use the right language and take advantage of the excellent work that has been done already in this area, for example using the Creative Health Framework as a way to consider and plan Creative Health projects.

As the SCEP Steering Group lead for Health and Wellbeing, I would welcome any of our members to get in touch to connect on your Creative Health projects and your interest in this area.

Further Reading:

Creative Health Talks

Creative Health Quality Framework

Creative Health: The Short Report

Arts Council

National Centre for Creative Health (NCCH)

NCCH Roundtable on Education and Training: Creativity for Health and Wellbeing in the Education System

Social Prescribing (Barnardos)

Join us for the SCEP Expo on Monday 11 March

Join Southampton Cultural Education Partnership (SCEP) for an evening of networking and celebration at John Hansard Gallery on Monday 11 March, 17.30-19.00.

We are delighted to host the Connecting Culture Project and the young Cultural Connectors as they launch the Young People’s Manifesto for Culture and Creativity in Southampton. Connect with arts and cultural organisations and meet SCEP members who will be sharing examples of activities and resources available for children, young people, and schools in Southampton.

Cultural Connectors at What’s Next Southampton? Credit: @devplacephotos

Directions to John Hansard Gallery can be found here. If you’d like to attend, please RSVP below.

Youth Governance – Four Lessons Learnt from Working in Widening Participation

by Ellie Grant

Ellie Grant is the University of Southampton’s new Arts and Culture Coordinator. Ellie joined the university in July 2022 and initially worked within the Widening Participation and Social Mobility Directorate. Prior to this, she supported students as the President of Arts University Bournemouth Students’ Union.

It’s no secret that young people can provide amazing insights into a variety of issues and offer solutions that nobody else has considered. However, understanding how to engage young people in decision-making can be challenging for organisations exploring youth governance for the first time. Luckily, there are a variety of sectors we can look to for inspiration, and, for this blog, I’ll be reflecting on the lessons I learnt from my time working in Widening Participation.

Prior to joining the Arts and Culture team this January, I worked in the Widening Participation and Social Mobility Directorate at the University of Southampton. I supported a number of students as part of the university’s flagship social mobility programme, Ignite Your Success, and it was during this time that I developed an understanding of the importance of youth governance. While there are many elements of youth governance and leadership that I could discuss in this blog, I’ve selected four key lessons that I believe can be applied to cultural education.

Embed co-design at every stage

Whether you’re developing a project or a policy, one of the best ways to capture the youth voice is to embed co-design into every stage of your workstream. In my previous role, I was lucky enough to have access to a Student Advisory Board, a group of students from a variety of backgrounds who were consulted on different projects. These students helped to identify potential pitfalls in our proposals and worked with us to find creative solutions.

“For co-design to really work, the young people involved in a project should feel that they are making a tangible contribution to its objectives and outcomes.”

Not every organisation will have the resources to set up a youth consultation board, but luckily, co-design can take many different forms. Depending on the scale of the project, it may be more suitable to hire an intern or work with an elected representative. In any case, for co-design to really work, the young people involved in a project should feel that they are making a tangible contribution to its objectives and outcomes.

Support and encourage youth-led activity

Giving young people the tools they need to create and lead their own activities can often result in more successful outcomes. In Ignite, we facilitated this by forming a student social committee. As staff, we provided administrative support in the form of processing bookings and payments, but the students themselves were responsible for planning, promoting, and delivering the events. Not only did these events have better levels of attendance and enjoyment, but the students on the committee developed teamworking and leadership skills.

While the level of independence will vary depending on the ages and circumstances of the people we’re working with, good youth governance asks us to consider what support young people need in order to run their own projects or create new policies. This might include access to meeting spaces, specialist equipment, training, or funding. Even things that we might take for granted, such as transport to meetings, should be considered.

Empower leadership in all its forms

[We will ensure] All children and young people have a voice, are listened to and can influence the services they receive.
Southampton City Council, Children and Young Peoples Strategy 2022-2027

Joining panels or running activities won’t appeal to all young people but that doesn’t mean they can’t be leaders. It’s important that we find ways to empower leadership for those who are—for a variety of reasons including lack of confidence or lack of trust—less able to participate in traditional forms of youth governance. There are still insights to be gained by encouraging these individuals to participate in things like small group work or classroom discussions and then building towards more challenging activities such as peer mentoring or reverse mentoring.

Reach out to those who are ‘hard to reach’

Similarly to my previous point, my final key message is about the importance of trying to work with young people who are less engaged. Typically, the same students who sit on the board for their youth club are also school council members and scout leaders and activists and so on, and this often means that the voices we hear in these spaces aren’t always diverse. We then miss the thoughts and opinions of those who opt out of these opportunities to co-design and share.

In both my Widening Participation and Student Voice work, I found that it was often those who weren’t as engaged who offered the most valuable insights into a project. In many cases, these are the young people who face additional barriers in life and whose needs are often neglected by traditional youth spaces. Learning from these individuals is often the key to ensuring a project or policy works for all the young people you want to support. Naturally, there isn’t a one size fits all approach to reaching these young people, but trying to understand their circumstances and meet them on their level is a good place to start.

How can creative learning support wider education and transferable skills?

by Jem Rycraft, Enham Trust

Jem Rycraft has worked for Enham Trust, which manages the Skills2Achieve provision, since August 2019.

We all know creative learning can have a big impact on outcomes for young people, both in terms of their wellbeing and their employability and transferable skills, but what works well?

In Focus, a Steering Group member of the SCEP, is working with Skills2Achieve (S2A), an Enham Trust programme which seeks to mitigate the risks of young people becoming or remaining a NEET (not in education, employment, and training) statistic.

In Southampton at the last count there were 178 known NEET young people and 154 young people who at present are unaccounted for. Therefore, the likely number of young people being NEET is at least 332. Of the 178 young people known to be NEET, 4.2% are Looked After Children, 9.3% have an Education Health Care Plan, 20.69% have identified Special Education Needs, 4.6% are attached to youth justice services, and 8.8% are teen parents.

It is against this backdrop that S2A seeks to help and support young people make the transition from adolescence into adulthood. The programme is set up to help young people (16-25) achieve accredited functional skills qualifications in English & Maths, awarded by City & Guilds. Additionally, the young people follow a programme of employability, which aims to support them to identify goals, negotiate targets, and work towards an individualised progression route.

A person with long hair crouches down to take an artistic photo of the rust on a white van

During the S2A programme, In Focus have been delivering weekly workshops with two groups of NEET young people, providing access to professional photographic equipment such as DSLR Cameras, lighting equipment, and professional photographers. The young people have completed digital badges and are doing Arts Awards. They have a creative portfolio of work which includes photographs, collage, montage, and other related visual mediums, as well as creative writing which supports the visual elements of their work.

This has given our young people the opportunity to focus on developing and nurturing creativity and fostering the so-called soft skills and skills of transferability needed in the workplace.

In the three years that S2A has been working with In Focus Education and Development, we have seen an impact in ways which are often difficult to measure. We believe they include developing the following skills:

Respect
Starting a dialogue
Experimenting
Finding one’s voice
Make connections
Self-evaluation
Observation
Self-expression
Valuing aesthetics
Learning from mistakes
Embracing diversity

Envisioning solutions
Reflecting on our work
Perseverance
Having an opinion
Breaking away from stereotypes
Collaboration
See another point of view
Listen
Create
Innovate
Appreciate beauty

A group of five young people are stood outside. One of them is jumping and throwing a red object in the air, while the other four are holding digital cameras and taking photos of the object.

The partnership with In Focus Education and Development has enabled a number of young people to complete their programme with us and achieve additional qualifications such as Explore and Bronze Arts Awards (which are on the regulated qualifications framework) and Digital Badges, which can be used by both the student and potential employers to identify transferable skills for the workplace as they link to the government’s Indeed website for employment.

To find out more about Skills2Achieve contact the Enham Trust.

To find out more about photography-based learning and development contact info@infocusedu.co.uk

Choices: a creative approach to violence reduction in schools

This month we are featuring a guest blog from Southampton Cultural Education Partnership member Artswork. Discover how a creative arts project using fables and Forum Theatre is empowering young people to understand the risks of violence, knife crime and exploitation and make choices which keep them safe.

Artswork empowers young people through creativity. We are currently delivering Choices, a creative approach to violence reduction in schools across Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. This is just one of the ways that Artswork delivers on its mission through creative programmes by, with and for young people alongside our core programmes around activating young cultural changemakers, creative learning and creative careers.

Choices is designed to support young people to make informed decisions. It helps them to recognise the power that things like peer pressure can play on their actions, so that they feel empowered to make choices which keep them safe. Taking a trauma-informed approach, the programme draws on the lived experienced of young men in Winchester Prison. Following their feedback, we don’t specifically talk about issues such as knife crime or county lines. Instead we use metaphors and fables which enable the young people to engage at their own knowledge level. It’s a fundamentally creative approach which sets up the conversations that develop in a different and productive way.

We start with training for school staff, looking at tools such as philosophy for children and Mantle of the Expert. This equips teachers and staff with a diverse range of approaches to discuss matters that truly resonate with young minds. Feedback from these training sessions has been really positive with staff saying that it provided “creative ways to get children to think about themselves and the world”.

“It really changed the way I think about approaching these topics with students.”
Training participant

We then have two workshops with the young people which use Forum Theatre techniques, run by our project partner Bear Face Theatre. Forum Theatre, originally developed by Augusto Boal in South America, empowers the audience to interact and try out different solutions to challenges presented. Pupils are shown a short animation in which they are introduced to our characters, Buddy and Joe, and hear their dilemmas. These characters grapple with common challenges, such as the desire to belong and the search for excitement, all while navigating the potential consequences of their choices.

The young people explore possible decisions to find ways to have a positive outcome for the characters. Using Forum Theatre allows the young people to ‘rehearse’ situations. In a similar way to an exercise class which seems hard at first but becomes easier as your muscles remember the movements, this rehearsal allows young people to be better equipped to make informed choices when faced with similar situations in real life. It’s a creative approach that can have real impact on young people’s actions and lives.

“We thoroughly enjoyed the training and the subsequent work with the children has been really impactful.”
Primary Teacher

A unique aspect of Choices is the involvement of students in creating their own fables. Following the workshops, young participants write their own fables that address challenges which are authentic to them. These peer-led resources are then collated to create a lasting legacy. This allows other schools and their pupils to engage with and learn from the project.

Illustration of a young person with a phone. Trouble is crossed out on the wall and excitement is written underneath.

The programme is funded by the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner through Hampshire and Isle of Wight Violence Reduction Unit. It runs until July 2025, leaving behind resources and embedded creative practice that schools tell us will last far longer.

“I am really pleased to support this fantastic programme which will have such a positive impact on school children across Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. Interventions, especially in these formative years, are crucial as they allow young people to understand the risks of violence, knife crime and exploitation and help them make informed decisions on how to respond more positively to challenging situations throughout their life.”
Donna Jones, Police Crime Commissioner

Choices is testament to the increasing recognition of the transformative power that creativity can have in addressing complex societal issues. The programme recognises pupils as experts in their own lives whilst providing safe ways to explore difficult subjects. As one pupil said “It’s a serious subject, but they made it as fun as they could”.

Choices will be externally evaluated by Liverpool John Moores University. The evaluation will provide further learning about the use of creativity in such interventions. To find out more, please contact info@artswork.org.uk.

Annabel Cook, Deputy CEO of Artswork