News and Blog – Page 5 – Southampton Cultural Education Partnership

The pleasure of offering support

Issa Loyaan Farrah-Kelly shares his first experiences as a Creative Mentor and how he is working with his mentee, a fellow poet.

Issa Loyaan Farrah-Kelly, poet, SCEP Creative Mentor

I applied to be a Creative Mentor with a sense of quiet trust, and enthusiasm…that I would be accepted, and was quietly overjoyed to be brought on board.

I found the training to essentially be a series of digestible, yet explicitly thorough, masterclasses in various elements of good practice of Creative Mentorship…delivered in a somewhat informal, yet explicitly professional manner. In a nutshell, I call my experience of the Creative Mentorship training practical philosophy.

I think there was a mutual/collective sense of excitement shared between myself and my Creative Mentor peers in training, all of us artists in various disciplines. My discipline is poetry.

This sense of excitement was, in my mind…practically, professionally and justifiably kindled by our mentors/coaches/trainers…Matt, Craig, Anna…and Jodie.

When I received word that I had been matched with a young poet, who wished to develop…it was as if abstract excitement, enthusiasm at being invited to share…insofar as I can….so much as I may understand about poetry etc…became solidified/crystallized…the Creative Mentorship role became real, and happily so.

Question Time,
by Issa Loyaan Farrah-Kelly — Question Time, a poem by Issa Loyaan Farrah-Kelly

My role is to support my mentee, which is an absolute pleasure…in developing poems over the course of 8 sessions, each session 1 hour long…held every fortnight after school.

My mentee wishes to write about their experiences of racism, which is unfortunately…a relevant, valid and important thing to be heard.

My mentee already has a sense of themselves as a poet, in a sense I consider myself jammy to have been matched with such a mentee.

Our sessions are basically conversational workshops, wherein we discuss poetry and work on pieces…under my mentee’s impetus, and I generally consider my role as being a sounding board/ideas person…making suggestions…never dictations.

I have a line of contact, via my mentee’s teacher, whereby I can ping ideas/developments etc, and receive them in turn.

I think it works quite nicely

Issa

The Southampton Cultural Education Partnership’s (SCEP) objective is to develop a cohort of Creative Mentors as local role models in Southampton, who will work directly with and inspire Children and Young People, including those from at risk, marginalised backgrounds or NEET (not in employment education or training).

Enjoying the little wins

Creative Mentor JJ gives an insight into the first few weeks working with his mentee.

JJ, actor, theatre maker and young creative, SCEP Creative Mentor Scheme — JJ, actor, theatre maker and young creative, SCEP Creative Mentor

My name is JJ Gale and I am an actor, theatre maker/facilitator and professional wrestler. I have been a part of SCEP’s creative mentoring programme since November 2022.

After months of insightful training last year, I am now working 1-1 with my mentee. It has been an interesting journey so far. I was paired with a young person who has no experience in the arts. However, they have expressed an interest in drama and performing arts.

My first few meetings made it clear that there was going to be some work needed to forge a positive and trusting professional relationship with my young person. They were reserved and cautious. Not wanting to open up or share much information about themselves with me. Initially even having a conversation was a struggle.

This being said as the weeks have gone on, I have found common ground and began work on creating this relationship. I have found the best approach is to always come to sessions with an enthusiastic and positive attitude. Also, I am trying my best to offer as many opportunities to experience and explore performing arts.

We have recently been to see their first ever theatre show. This was a fantastic night. Although anxious and pessimistic before the show. Following the play my mentee highly rated the performance and had a beaming smile across his face. This was extremely rewarding.

My goal throughout this process is to open the door into the possibilities for involvement and interaction with Performing Arts in Southampton for my young person. I believe it’s important to take the time to care enough and support you in the first steps in trying and exploring something new. I hope this develops into more of an interest and passion for the performing arts. However, if this is not the case then at least I have facilitated some new life experiences. I believe that already they are learning new transferable skills. Also, I think it’s great to have a safe space to push yourself out of your comfort zone and I am grateful for the chance to help facilitate that in a small way.

I am learning that I have to be in tune with the young person and where they are in life and this process and allow that to inform my goals and plans going forward in regards to the mentoring programme. I am enjoying the little wins.

Big Dreams and Big Impacts at the SCEP Workshop

More than 30 representatives of Southampton’s arts, education, health and police sectors took part in the SCEP (Southampton Cultural Education Partnership) workshop at the John Hansard Gallery on 30 January 2023 to look at how arts and culture could improve the lives of children and young people in the city.

Photographs: Louise Coysh

At the forefront of everyone’s minds was young people; what they want from arts and culture and how to ensure they get it.
SCEP workshop participant

Participants undertook various activities investigating the needs and aspirations of local children and young people before taking part in a group Big Dream Big Impact workshop. The groups were given a hypothetic scenario where an anonymous donor had given £2 million to improve the lives of children and young people using arts and culture, and then discussed ideas to use the money which could be feasibly implemented in the city if funding was available. These included:

A fleet of community arts and education buses which could visit individual communities with community-led activities and then create a centralised festival site showcasing what had been produced in each area.
Increasing the opening hours of existing spaces like libraries to run arts activities and connecting the city with bus passes for every young person.
A social enterprise initiative focused on youth led events and activities with free transport for young people.
‘You Belong Here’ – an arts award hub with go-and-see transport and neighbourhood road shows.
An adolescent crisis lounge with a hub-and-spoke support system.

Key elements were then discussed to see which could be taken forward in the work of the SCEP over the next year including transport and building on past projects, utilising and revitalising community assets, arts linked with additional provision such as health, a focus on places and neighbourhoods and neutral spaces for young people. Some young people attended the event and threading through all the discussion was the need to give young people the power to direct and drive future activity.

I was reminded all over again of the power of a creative act to inspire people to work together and come up with amazing new ideas.
SCEP workshop participant

If you want to learn more about SCEP, become a member, hear about future events, or to join our mailing list, please email us

‘Rationalising’ your goals

Creative Mentor Jilly Evans brings us the next instalment of our Creative Mentors’ training blog.

Jilly Evans, visual artist, SCEP Creative Mentor

Anna and Matt were unlucky enough to get COVID, so Craig stepped in and taught us all about safeguarding, as always there is so much to learn. Talking about ‘disclosures’ reminded me of knitting/stitching workshops I’d run and how conversation seems to flow more easily when we’re all engaged in creative activity. Whilst all the safeguarding training is vital, I was glad to be reminded that our role is to work on the development of the child.

Craig gave us an example of how a disclosure might happen by playing the part of a young person whose Dad, Mr Pineapple, was clearly not a very nice individual. We had to note down key points from the disclosure, as well as listening. I realised that I also need to make notes to ensure I capture all the relevant information as it’s crucial to have all the facts.

Craig gave us a top tip, some confidential documents such as a contact information form cannot be taken home, they need to be kept securely in a locked container, but your car can be a locked container, who knew!

The following week Matt and Anna, recovered from COVID, taught us all about coaching, goal setting and active listening. We started the session by sitting, closing our eyes and grounding ourselves in the space. It felt good to sit in the space and become present, to forget about the mad dash that I find myself in every weekday morning to get to work/the studio/ Mentor training anywhere near on time.

We had all been asked to think about a goal or two to share with the group, these included a novel to be written, paintings to be created and studio spaces to be ‘rationalised’ (a fancy word for having a clear out – that was one of mine). In the afternoon we all paired up. Amy and I took turns in being the active listener/coach and the person being coached, swapping roles every few minutes when the timer went off. It felt like we were really getting somewhere and maybe, just maybe my studio may be ‘rationalised’ next year!

Jilly Evans

Creating Confidence

The next in our series of Creative Mentor training blogs comes from Aidan, Studio Manager at Hightown Studios.

Aidan, Studio Manager at Hightown Studio, SCEP Creative Mentor

The Creative Mentorship Programme is a six month project, led by Jodie Sadler, Anna Carr, Matt Salvage and Craig Lockwood. First of all, I would like to say that all the leaders of the programme are incredible. They’re passionate, kind, and they have a vast wealth of knowledge between them that they share with enthusiasm and care. I wanted to thank them for their hard work, before writing about the programme so far.

There have now been four creative mentor sessions and my impressions are that it’s going to be an incredibly useful and special programme going forward. Our first session was mostly spent meeting each other and breaking the ice, but also learning a little bit about warm-up games and methods of leading group activities to calm and/or motivate the room. We then talked about and shared an object related to our practices, which was refreshing, especially to hear about the wide array of art forms and how special they are to every individual in the room. As we made our way around the circle, I learned about “rebellious” crafts, graphic design, fine art, poetry, photography, and even a little about wrestling. I’ve found every week that the room is absolutely buzzing with passion and drive for the creative arts.

The second session consisted of an introduction to the youth/arts sectors, run by Matt. It was very useful to learn about the different sectors, and where different companies fell. We talked at length about third sector youth agencies and how they can be funded. It was all-in-all a really interesting day.

The third session covered practice sharing, where each participant shared a ten minute workshop related to their practice. As we did that, Craig portrayed a young person with a different potential behavioural need for each workshop. This was a great exercise in how to deal with adverse behaviour and the best ways to nurture a young person’s learning/enjoyment while navigating more complex needs. We later learned about reality therapy and the idea of the real, perceived, and quality world. All very interesting topics and so useful to learn about.

The fourth session was spent learning about Trauma Informed Practice. There was so much covered about the idea of Trauma Informed Practice, that I had to ruminate for a while after the session. There was so much fascinating and vital information that I needed extra time to research it for myself. In the afternoon we performed “part 2” of behavioural needs learning, by doing various roleplays of an initial session with a young person and a referrer.

Overall, the sessions have been so helpful in my own learning, and for my confidence in myself as a creative mentor in the near future. I look upon the next few months with a sense of excitement and anticipation. This has been a fantastic opportunity thus far.

Aidan