Oblique Strategies, A Sticky Wall, and a Map – Dawn Williams blog

Three years ago the challenge given to Bridge North East was to  connect  children, and young people to “Great Art and Culture “ and  to be the bridge between  the Cultural Sector and the Education sector.

Quite a big ask…..

How could we bring together in one room people from different sectors who speak different languages and hold different viewpoints? How could we create a safe creative respectful space where real learning could happen? How could we facilitate meaningful group conversations and productive decision making? How could we make best use of the wisdom of the people in the room? How could we make the best use of our valuable time together?

From the very beginning we have deliberately put creative facilitation at the heart of our three year regional programme. Put Creative Facilitation into a search engine and you will find thousands of links. The trick is to choose the right method. We have developed and honed a very large tool box to play with, and created some new toys along the way. The contents include:

• Wall of Wonder
• Group Consensus
• Action Planning
• The Islands Exercise
• Oblique Strategy Cards
• Thinking Hats
• SCRUM
• Feathers of Evaluation
• Open Space
• The Sieve of Reality
• Sticky Walls x 7 – assorted colours
• Pipe cleaners,
• Coloured paper / pens / sticky dots / labels and more post it notes than you can shake a stick at.
• A bucket of curiosity
• A suitcase of wonder
• A packet of playfulness
• A belly full of laughter

Whether it is a Regional Conversation, Arts Award Conference, Cultural Education Cohort or an  advisory group meeting, we have noticed that the first thing people do when they arrive is to seek out any people they already know. It provides a level of comfort and security. Our role for three years has been to mix people up, and plan activities which enable connections to be revealed, and for different conversations to happen.

So what have we learned after 3 years?

• That it is crucial to allocate time to planning to design of each event. Questions we always ask ourselves:  What do we want to have happened by the end of the meeting / event? How do we want our participants to feel? Which process will best support this? What sort of space will we be in? What resources do we need? Will there be cake?
• To always have a plan B and plan C.
• That time and space for quality conversations is valued – we have held a space for individuals to come together and have good conversations.
• Not to be afraid of silence
• To be playful
• To be brave

It is fitting that our final act as Bridge North East has been to produce Our Map of the Future. It is an object of beauty which marks the Bridge North East partners and work over the last three years.  Please use it to explore new connections in new territories and facilitate new conversations.

OUR MAP FOR THE FUTURE!

Useful guides for the Creative Facilitator:

http://www.ica-uk.org.uk/group-facilitation-methods/

creativefacilitation.com

/www.workingknowledgeps.com/

Personal reflection on the Bridge programme from Nick Malyan

A blog from Nick Malyan, Bridge North East project coordinator. 

Signing up to work on the final three months of a three year programme might not typically be considered a wise move. But when the Bridge North East team contacted me at the end of 2014 to ask me about joining their team I didn’t hesitate to say yes.

I’d worked with various members of the Bridge team over the past two years in a few different capacities ; working with New Writing North on a projects as part of the Teaching Schools strand of work and also using a seed fund grant to develop a youth network at Empty Shop in Durham. I’d found Bridge’s approach to commissioning really refreshing. Every contract and project was built implicitly on trust and whilst direct delivery was never part of equation the team were never afraid to be an active partner; turning up to events and sessions and pitching in or taking part as appropriate. Even more importantly, they were happy to support you at any stage in a project – only ever being a phone call away regardless of whether it was development, delivery or evaluation.

I was particularly pleased to be asked to work on a programme of events that were all about sharing and celebrating Bridge’s work. Beginning in January I worked towards three conferences and a series of seminars; the Arts Award and Cultural Education conferences in February and the Knowledge Exchange and First World War seminars in March.
Working in this capacity put me in a unique and very enjoyable position. Despite having only been in the team three months the conferences brought me into contact with a who’s who of Bridge North East partners and projects meaning I’ve gained a real understanding of the partnerships that have defined Bridge’s three year programme. The seminars took me around the region and brought me into contact with museums and heritage organisations doing important work to educate children and young people about the First World War.

I had joked at the beginning of January about being able to spend three months travelling the region and showing off about lots of work I had nothing to do with. In reality my time with Bridge wasn’t actually all that far away from that! Due to my status as someone who’d been a partner first and knowledgeable member of the team second I found myself able to stand up and talk genuinely and enthusiastically about Bridge’s projects and partnerships – and what was lovely was to feel that enthusiasm reciprocated consistently. The events programme from January to March took the Bridge team around the region with venues in Newcastle, Northumberland, Sunderland and Tees Valley. Wherever we went and whoever we met there was always a feeling that I, and Bridge, were welcomed and our time was valued and words trusted – and that, more than anything, is testament to the partnerships that Bridge has built and nourished over the past three years.

The risky business of building bridges

Some personal thoughts from Leila d’Aronville, Bridge North East Senior Manager.

We are all writing personal blogs on our reflections of the last 3 years and it is harder than you think! There is so much that has happened and so many stories to tell, how do you choose just one? Or how do you manage to squeeze more than one into a blog that people might actually want to read?

I decided my theme would be risk…the risks we have taken over the 3 years, and how we have grown through our work, and also through mutual trust between colleagues.

The first risk we took was taking on the Bridge function. The Bridge function was a new role developed by Arts Council, and when we took on the role ACE didn’t know what they wanted Bridges to be, in fact I would go so far as to say they had unrealistic expectations…as did the rest of the sector. Cultural Education had gone from times of plenty (Creative Partnerships, Find Your Talent and Sing Up amongst those healthily funded programmes) to a small drop in the ocean. Bridge North East was functioning in one of the most deprived regions in England, but as we have a smaller population we were also doing it on a smaller amount of money than the other Bridges. In that first year the goal posts were moved a fair few times, and the landscape around us was also changing unrecognisably on an almost daily basis – with whole Arts Development teams being removed, the youth service crumbling before our very eyes and the way schools were developing never seeming constant.

Risk two was how we worked with colleagues. We could have decided on a very strict and stringent plan which everyone had to follow, however previous experience guided us towards one of fluidity and exploration. We had such a small amount of money to deliver such big targets over the three years of the Bridge, it seemed important we work WITH our colleagues to develop something that would work to fulfil more than just our aims, but theirs as well. Our intention of working in this way was that our partners would not need Bridge North East at the end of the three year period…we were ostensibly making ourselves redundant. Morally it was the only thing to do. We didn’t know if there would be any more funding, and if there was it was likely to have a different focus, so anything we set up needed to be sustainable.

Our third risk was around how we funded projects. It was important to us that people have different routes in to our programme, and so we made sure we had different funding streams. Some funding was large and needed the have a strategic lead (in many cases Local Authority) and some smaller and put out via an open tenders, so anyone from the sector felt like they could approach us with an idea. These smaller pieces of funding have been some of our most successful – see blog on Small Scale Investment.

Collectively as a team we have become very good at approaching risk. Obviously we work to mitigate it, but to be risk averse in this climate is more dangerous than taking risks. We have been in a really enviable position whereby we can provide support to those wanting to take risks…I really hope that carries on, and those risk takers can help others to take the plunge. At times of greatest austerity we must not shy away from innovation and exploration. It is at these times that the most exciting things can occur.

Some personal reflections from Helen Green, Head of Bridge North East

Sitting down and reflecting on the last three years to write a personal blog, there is such al lot that I could write and probably should write about – the partnerships and the work that has been developed, the risks that have been taken and the learning that has been gathered. But pleanty of words have been dedicated to this.

Instead I want to concentrate on the Bridge North East Team – this amazing bunch of people whom I have had the absolute pleasure of working with over the course of three years,  whom have taught me so much.

Very few of us work in complete isolation and all too often we forget that sitting on the desk next to us or across the office are peers and colleagues who have an amazing amount of knowledge, wisdom, experience and talent that is different to our own and that we can learn so much from. We see these people day in and day out, and its when you realise that you aren’t going to be working with these people any more that you appreciate what an absolute gift you have been given.

It’s not just about different skills though, its about what can be achieved when all this different skill and knowledge is pulled together, working towards the same outcome or a shared goal. For the last three years I have held the position of ‘Head’ of Bridge North East and speaking really honestly it is a job title that I have struggled with; its not the responsibility that has made me feel uncomfortable it is the fact that the work of the Bridge North East has been delivered as a team. A team who have supported and carried one another, challenged each others thinking, supported long term strategy planning, shared concerns and shared successes.

At a recent away day the team put a sticky wall up and plotted out the work of Bridge North East over three years – it was chokka block full – full of ups and downs, highs and lows. This exercise is called ‘The Wall of Wonder’. We stepped back, all of us and it genuinely was wonderful. Across the team, there was a palpable sense of really great achievement.

So what will I take with me from my time with the Bridge North East team – ask for help, take a risk, share your thoughts, share your concerns, be kind to one another, share the vision and always always have a kettle, a never ending supply of tea and coffee and lottery kitty, just on the off chance.

Never stop investing in your team, they are the greatest asset.

Eileen Atkins blog

Some personal reflections of her time in the Bridge North East team.

I have always loved history for as long as I can remember and I can trace that back directly to visiting great museums and heritage sites as a kid. They fired my imagination, made me want to explore and find out new things. For me, museums are houses for people’s stories and the greatest story is the development of our cultures and civilisations. I am extremely lucky to be able to work in a sector that I feel very passionate about.

At the end of 2012, I grabbed the opportunity to take on a secondment from Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums (TWAM) to become the Museums Manager for Bridge North East. Initially the post was part time so I continued as Learning Officer at Discovery Museum but I quickly got hooked on the work at Bridge North East. Primarily because I got to work with lots of inspiring museum educators across the Region but also because the team and the wider work of Bridge was amazing. My secondment kept getting extended and finally in April 2014 I was able to turn it into a full time secondment. I can honestly say it has been the best year of my career.

I have learnt so much from the wealth of experience and talent in the Bridge North East team and through the diversity of the work. It has opened my eyes to how other arts and culture organisations work with schools and how schools want to engage with them. Museums really stand their ground amongst these and in some areas are leading the way but there is so much to learn from cross sector partnership working.

I have met many committed, enthusiastic museum educators. They are working in a period of uncertainty in terms of funding and governance but fundamentally their shared goal to provide great learning opportunities for young people makes them strong. I have met teachers who are very eager to work more with museums and are passionate about how museums can enhance their teaching and broaden their pupils’ experiences. One of the best parts of my work is where I can bring people together and help give them the space and time to have those conversations, think creatively about their schools programmes and help them to access knowledge and new ideas to support their work.

I know I am returning to TWAM armed with new knowledge and experience that is far more varied than I previously had. I am a convert to Arts Award because I have seen how young people can benefit from it in practice and I know it can shape new approaches and ways of working. I have a better understanding of the range of great arts and culture in the Region and the power of working collaboratively. I have seen through the seed fund projects that a little bit of funding mixed with encouragement and opportunity can go a very long way. I have also seen how large strategic approaches like the work with Sunderland can lead to a real fundamental change in how organisations plan and develop collectively.

Being part of the Bridge North East team has shaped and will continue to shape my career and, in that way, I can carry on contributing to the amazing legacy the programme leaves for the North East.

Have you ever played snakes and ladders?

Jeanne Hale – A personal reflection of her work with the Bridge team, both from within the team and as part of the Advisory Group. 

Have you ever played snakes and ladders? If you have, you will know that it takes a while to get from square one to the top of the board and that it can be a very frustrating game to play. The exhilaration of climbing ladders to find that a snake will take you back to where you started and leaves you feeling very frustrated.

I sit here at the top of a ladder having worked as Head of Bridge North East to cover Helens maternity leave) in the last year of the programme.  As this programme comes to an end, and the region awaits the new Culture Bridge NE at TWAM, we have been asked to write a reflection on our time at Bridge North East for our archived website.  I am not quite sure where to start so thought that I would start at the very beginning of the game.

There once was a world without Bridge organisations.  It was the time of poverty after plenty with the demise of Creative Partnerships and a shift in the curriculum focus in schools so that the arts subjects no longer had the currency they previously held.

Three years ago ACE, in their wisdom, decided that they needed to find a solution to this and Bridges were created to do exactly what it says on the tin; be the bridge between the education and the cultural sector. What would the Bridge organisations, ten across the country, do? That was the question everyone asked. They were asked to connect young people with ‘great arts and culture’ so off they went to discover what this was and how it could be done. ACE didn’t really know how this would work and the last three years have been a journey of intrepid exploration up ladders and down snakes both for ACE and the organisations involved.

My involvement with BNE began three years ago when I was invited to be part of the Regional Advisory group. This was a representative group of practitioners from across the region but we outnumbered the Bridge team by about 3:1…whilst the meetings were a great opportunity to network and to find out more about the programme I think it soon became clear that the team needed to re think this group and its role. A smaller group, leaner and meaner, or leaner and keener perhaps, was created from applications received.

This smaller advisory group chaired by Mark Robinson bought me much closer to the work of BNE. It was apparent from the meetings that ACE were still not clear on the direction and whilst across the country each Bridge organisation was beginning to create a body of work that responded to local need, ACE was trying to drive the national agenda. It was also apparent that the expectation of organisations across the region could never be met on the budget that was allocated to the North East. So there began a lot of climbing ladders and sliding down snakes whilst trying to tactically and strategically plan and manage the programme.

The Bridge team have navigated this complex game board, effectively steering a course that has produced some inspirational and innovative work with and for children and young people. This work has been delivered by partners across the region from both the cultural and education sector

Taken in that context, despite the snakes that emerged and the challenges encountered, this team have achieved a tremendous amount. The ladders they climbed built relationships and partnerships across the region, they have developed strong networks of practitioners that now dot the landscape of the North East and will drive a lot of this work forward.

The impact and legacy of Bridge North East will be felt across the region and gives the new Culture Bridge NE at TWAM a head start …perhaps still on the snakes and ladders board… but not at square one.

Northumberland –the quiet work behind the ‘Work’

A blog by Helen Green, Head of Bridge North East. 

There is a very good evaluation report of the work that Bridge North East has supported  in Northumberland over the last 3 years. The programme has been very successful but in this blog we thought it is important to highlight the ‘quiet work’. And by quiet work we mean the stuff that happens behind the scenes, that is never really public facing, or written up as such, but is hugely important in creating successful outcomes and impact.

At the centre of this work was an ambition to strengthen relationships between the cultural sector and schools in Northumberland. What this eventually led to was the appointment of Dr Judy Thomas, to the role of Cultural Enterprise and Skills Coordinator.  In this role Judy developed a programme of cluster models which in essence has worked to support and strengthen numerous communities/networks.

The starting point was pretty basic, and there were numerous failed attempts to start to build momentum. Schools were not responding to invitations, nobody was connecting and at times it will have felt like flogging a dead horse…and this is where the quiet work begins. Reflecting on this lack of response, thinking about why people weren’t taking up the offer, Judy realised that the language she was using to try and attract the attention of teachers, the language of the formal education sector, was in fact the very thing turning teachers off.

Stop, think, reflect and adapt. What does the light-touch approach look like, if you are a teacher battling the everyday, what is it that you need, what would make you respond, what will remind you that you aren’t just a teacher, that you are a creative practitioner in your own right? Judy’s response to this was to rename her networking event to an invitation to a ‘Creative Cream Tea’, and boom! Huge take up.

‘Creative Cream Teas has been met with openness and willingness. The sessions hosted by schools in school has been especially inviting. Visiting other schools “nosing around” (Northumberland Teacher) fulfils a a shared sense of curiosity. This is not just about making connections and getting new ideas; the sharing of best practice offers reassurance that existing ideas are working well’

The quiet work, the behind the scenes work is also hugely time-consuming and can feel very slow. As in most co-ordination roles, a significant thrust of this work is about nurturing and developing trusting and longstanding positive relationships. Communication therefore is key, how do the communication channels remain open, how is momentum sustained? Put simply, in the case in Northumberland it was by always being there. Always being in regular email contact, flagging opportunities, following up invitations, visiting in person, being a face that people know and welcome, being a brilliant personal contact; in essence, committing to communication.

There is no doubt that the work that Judy and Northumberland Arts Development Team have initiated will continue to flourish. Embarking on thier forward journey there is a deep understanding of the importance of the quiet work. And in all our work, while budgets continue to be squeezed it has never been more important that we continue to afford the space and time for the quiet work to continue! Shhhhhhhhh

Cultural Collaboration in Newcastle

A blog written by Jeanne  Hale, Head of Bridge North East (Maternity) and previously Specialist Adviser for Creativity at Newcastle Council. 

It has been a time of significant change across the education sector. We have been watching the changing landscape of schools and wondering what difference it will make and will it be positive one?  It is rapid change and making us all conscious of how we communicate offers for children and young people and who we contact in schools. Currently the impact is still emerging but what we do see are new and different relationships e.g. Learning Trusts within Local Authorities and alliances of Teaching Schools that are across local authority boundaries.

Newcastle City Council Arts Team, itself subject to the ravages of local authority funding cuts, had the opportunity in partnership with Bridge North East to test these emerging relationships and see how the new partnerships might expand the delivery of high quality opportunities for cultural engagement by children and young people.  What if this new landscape changed the interaction between the education and cultural sector?

In Newcastle there are a number of new Learning Trusts. An invitation went out for clusters of schools to engage in a ‘Cultural Collaborators’ programme. The name had negative connotations of collusion…and in some contexts treason! …but in a positive sense we wanted groups of teachers who would come together as associates in an activity, endeavour or sphere of common interest... developing a cultural offer in the curriculum.

Lead teachers were asked what was currently offered in their schools, encouraged to look at planning i.e. where would a cultural intervention add value and enhance learning. They looked at how they currently find partners; commonly an organisation they knew and had previously worked with or recommended by other schools. There was a clear feeling that outside that knowledge it was ‘risky’ territory. Whilst they would happily tender for other services in school tendering for cultural activity was new to then. Supported in looking at new ways of engaging with organisations and artists they were given models of how to write a tender to go out to the arts sector, how to judge applications and supported in the selection process. Some trained as Arts Award advisors and delivered Arts Award as of their work

A result of the work is that there is an emerging network of skilled, knowledgeable and culturally engaged teachers able to commission work for their own schools rather than waiting for offers to come to them.  Building the model around the Learning Trusts created a supportive network of teachers with a shared context and common knowledge. All schools are linked to NCAN the Northern Cultural Ambassadors Network and to an Arts Award Network.

We know that the impact of leadership in schools is significant and the project worked best where there was a highly supportive and engaged senior management. The size of the cluster also appeared to be crucial where smaller group of schools worked together and shared learning more effectively.

The programme has given the Arts Team an opportunity to combine its traditional role of community arts development with cultural and creativity in education, giving a more joined up service to a community…’the programme has informed the way we will work with schools in the future leading to future partnership arrangements’.

Major partnership investment in Sunderland

A blog written by Leila d’Aronville, Bridge North East Senior Manager. 

After the initial consultation at the beginning of Bridge we highlighted areas in which to work across the region. One of those areas was Sunderland.

Initially Arts Council were very clear that they did not think Sunderland was a good area for us to focus on as there was too much change and things could become complicated. Personally I had worked in Sunderland before (many years ago) and knew how difficult it could be, but also saw a lot of potential.

It was clear things were changing in Sunderland. The University was leading a cultural revolution with the MAC Trust in the form of the Sunderland Cultural Partnership; and Sunderland and South Tyneside were in the process of bidding for Creative People and Places. However meetings on Wearside showed that there wasn’t really the capacity to work across all the partnerships, and the words that were given to us at every meeting were “when the Sunderland Cultural Partnerships co-ordinator is appointed we can move things forward”. The will was there, but not the way.

In 2013 Helen Connify was appointed SCP Coordinator. Poor Helen was bombarded by Bridge as soon as she came into post! We finally managed to set up a meeting inviting all cultural organisations in Sunderland, and several schools, to Arts Centre Washington with the idea that we would have a plan of action  by the end of it…we didn’t!

The meeting proved ACE right to a point. People round the table got us confused with CPP (which had been awarded by that point) and also couldn’t extract our proposal from the SCP work more generally.

Helen and I took a step back. We had £30k to spend in Sunderland, but it was clear the importance lay in developing relationships; developing relationships between schools and cultural organisations, but also developing relationships between the cultural organisations.

It became clear very quickly that our strategic approach needed to be to develop a cultural learning network for Sunderland and develop stronger relationships between schools and cultural organisations – alongside developing Arts Award. This was done by opening a tender process for cultural and education partnerships – outlining partnership outcomes, legacy and a commitment to Arts Award – this was called Sunderland Seed Funds. This process also formed the Sunderland Learning Group. The Seed Fund model had been successful in other areas of the Bridge work and so we knew it would work well, it was just a matter of having a bit of a leap of faith.

The work has been amazing, and the spirit and energy of the learning group has been inspirational. Never have I worked with a group of cultural organisations who have such a feeling of collaboration. Sunderland has been a complex place to work in the past, but I am very sure that things will move positively and quickly for them.

Here are some of the outcomes of the partnership investment work in Sunderland.

• A sustainable Cultural Learning Group, coordinated by the Sunderland Cultural Partnership;
• A collaborative approach to the Cultural Learning Strategy;
• The Cultural Learning Group and Bridge North East’s priorities written in to the Cultural Strategy for Sunderland – Sunderland as a Learning Zone;
• Each Seed Fund has developed and strengthened meaningful relationships between cultural providers and schools;
• Cultural education resources co-authored by cultural partners and schools;
• A collaborative approach to Arts Award across the city – Sunderland as a Supporter City – each cultural provider will highlight which elements of Arts Award they can support in the delivery of, which will be held on the Sunderland Cultural Partnership website;
• 45 staff from cultural organisations and schools across Sunderland trained up as Arts Award Advisors;
• Sunderland specific Arts Award resources including a teachers Step by Step into Arts Award;
• Visibility of the Sunderland Cultural Learning Group on the Sunderland Cultural Partnership’s website, including the ability to update cultural partner information and resources for schools.

Hartlepool – the place and the people

A blog written by Helen Green, Head of Bridge North East.

In those initial conversations back in 2012, when Bridge North East first identified Hartlepool as a priority area to work in, we knew the work was not going to be plain sailing. Hartlepool as an area, has no Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisations or Major Partnership Museums on its patch, but it does have an infrastructure of local authority funded arts, museum, and library venues in the town, as well as a thriving and dynamic youth service, one of the very few left in region.

Setting out three years ago – there was a very clear and identified need. There was a significant lack of opportunity for young people aged between 13 – 19 in the area. In talking to those young people it became clear very quickly that they had no connection to the cultural offer in the town, as these local authority venues were perceived to have nothing to offer.  But what Hartlepool was lacking in opportunity for young people, they made up for in a infrastructure of people, buildings and vision which really understands and cares about the communities they serve.

The work that has taken place in Hartlepool over the last three years, led by the Culture and Information team and Youth Service within the Borough Council, has been centred around a Young Cultural Ambassadors Programme – working directly with the children and young people of the town to shape and advocate the cultural offer available to them and their peers.

For the Borough council it was explicitly clear that if this Ambassadors programme was going to work it would need someone to deliver it. Year on year the council continues to face cuts and squeezed budgets; at that point the need for capacity was unequivocal. Hartlepool needed people on the ground delivering and driving the work.

From a Bridge North East perspective the work in Hartlepool was undoubtedly a risk- we were hesitant in supporting the creation of a post. It was our role to explore models of sustainability and from the outset, all Bridge North East investment was designed so that activity would not be dependent on continued financial support beyond the 3 years. It was clear in Hartlepool however that if this was going to work this Young Cultural Ambassadors Co-ordinate role was completely necessary. This is what Bridge North East supported, and the risk was very clear.

Up until a few months ago, it looked like this would have been a very different blog, but the risk has eventually paid off. From this starting point of consultation, Hartlepool has worked hard over three years, and has never really stopped talking and working with the young people in the town. At the end of March 2015, three years on, the learning and impact is evident:

Young people are now leading creative sessions for their peers in cultural venues across the town

A commitment to work with young people has now been written into every exhibition contract in the gallery for all visiting exhibitions and artists. Artists are encouraged to offer workshops, talks, tours or resources for young people to encourage deeper engagement with the exhibition and the work of that artist

Special VIP Preview evenings for young people are now programmed, continuing to encourage and welcome young people to access these venues

This is just skimming the surface of the work that has been developed and Bridge North East is delighted that this work will continue to develop into the future. The value of this role has been clearly understood, and not only will this work be sustained definitely for another year (hopefully for longer), it has been re-positioned and linked into the Borough Councils Regeneration plan ‘Hartlepool Vision’.

Looking back over the three years and reflecting on the success and the challenges, a fact shines through. This fact is that the work in Hartlepool has been driven by people and places in the town who really know, understand and care about the town and the people they serve.

The sound-bite that should be taken from the work in Hartlepool – when you find yourself lost in the gubbins of political rhetoric and government language, remember to think about the people and the places who are really making the impact on the cultural education landscape, but most importantly making an impact on the children and young people in that picture.

The not so secret World of Museums

A blog written by Eileen Atkins, Bridge North East Museums Manager. 

Museums and heritage organisations have increasingly engaged with the work of Bridge North East over the three years and the creation of my post as Museums Manager has had a real impact on this. My role has strengthened the embedding of museums and heritage work across the whole Bridge programme and I have enjoyed the fusion Bridge has provided of cross sector working.

When I started in 2013, many museums and heritage educators were facing uncertain times. They were already coming off the back of the demise of the Museums, Libraries and Arts (MLA) Council and the end of Renaissance in the Regions so there was a certain amount of suspicion about how the Arts Council would include them. Defining museums, heritage and film as ‘the wider cultural footprint’ didn’t help with this. Personally, I think it is a false divide to separate museums from heritage as they work so closely together and are so connected. I have also tried to include archives in the work as they provide a link between libraries and museums and somehow have slipped through the gap. Symptomatic of this was the sector’s questioning about the relevance of Arts Award in the early days and the word ‘Art’ which signified (to some of them) that it was designed for more traditional ‘arts’ venues like theatres and dance studios.

Now, as Bridge North East is ending, we have a bank of heritage and museums case studies, Arts Award projects have been delivered successfully in venues right across the region from Bellingham Heritage Centre to Cleveland Ironstone Mining Museum. The seven museums involved in the Museums and Schools project in the Tees Valley (Making a Mark) have created their own bespoke Arts Award log book. I hear about Arts Award projects now popping up all over the place in museums and heritage venues independently of Bridge, including a very exciting whole school project using Hadrian’s Wall.

In the North East we have a particular wealth of Industrial, Victorian and early 20^th Century history. Coupled with this, the predominant schools audience for museums and heritage venues is Primary Schools. Michael Gove’s chronology based crammed History Curriculum which starts at Pre-History and stops just past the Tudors for Primary Schools was like a smack in the face for museums. A wave of panic descended across the Country’s heritage venues.

Bridge North East answered this call for help through the heritage action research bursaries. The idea was to give partner museums a small pot of money, £1,000, to give them an opportunity to do targeted development work with local schools on getting their schools offer ready for the Curriculum and to share the outcomes with the wider sector. The results were far wider reaching than we could have imagined from such a small starting point. This reflects the enthusiasm, commitment and positive attitude of the museums staff involved. They used the project to drive long lasting change to their schools offer and ways of working.

These are just a few examples of the ways Bridge North East have been able to support the museums, heritage (and archives) venues around the Region. I am confident that those organisations and individual staff now feel more supported, connected to the wider arts and culture education work in the region, more informed about schools and best practice ways of working and will continue to connect with each other more.

The Power of Small Scale Investment

A blog written by Leila d’Aronville, Bridge North East Senior Manger. 

If there is one thing we have learnt from the three years of Bridge North East it is that small scale investment and risk taking works; it works for organisations, it works for funders, and most importantly it works for children and young people. Not only that, but small scale investment provides large scale impact, specifically strategic impact on how organisations work with young people.

In year one, we made a decision to deliver our consultation with young people through organisations in the region. People could bid to deliver one or more sessions with a budget of £3k, talking to young people about what they wanted, needed and how they felt about their local cultural offer.  We called these Youth Network Seed Funds. The difference this approach provided for some organisations made us realise that the flexibility of small scale investment was something we should continue into years two and three.

We re-thought the focus slightly so rather than consultation, future Seed Funds were about relationships. The way organisations approached the Seed Funds varied hugely, with really exciting consequences. Alnwick Playhouse and Arc Stockton decided to work with young audiences and programmers to reinvigorate the spaces, making the programming, marketing and welcome to the venues more young person friendly. Children North East had a really simple approach of walking young people to different venues in Newcastle and Gateshead, with the strategic outcome that the organisation began to understand the value of exposing children and young people to varied cultural experiences, and have written cultural partnerships into their 5 Year Strategy.

Through the Seed Funding organisations have gained valuable insight into working with young people, and in some cases have managed to turn that insight into very clear financial gain – with one Seed Fund recipient gaining £25k of funding in direct relation to Seed Fund work. Being involved in Seed Funds through Bridge North East has also raised the profile of the work through our events programme.

We have realised the transformational value of Seed Funding and small scale investment and have transferred the learning into our Museums Programme through the Bursaries, into the Sunderland Partnership Investment, and also into a Digital Seed Fund Model.

People who have been successful in obtaining a piece of small scale investment through the Bridge Programme have fed back to us that it has been a really enlightening process. We have not asked for huge applications – we have merely asked people to explore different ways of working  with young people or schools. We have not been afraid of failure – if something doesn’t work it’s ok as long as we can capture the learning. But the thing people have really fed back to us is that the amount of money has been perfect – it is not too much to feel intimidating, but equally not too little to be ineffectual, and it is just about the right amount of money to hold value within an organisation.

The Bombardment of Hartlepool 1914

The nation has quite rightly been remembering and marking the 100 year anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War. For young people in the North East it has been important to help them understand the impact war had so many years ago and, for the most part, so many miles from the front line.

But in December 1914 that front line was brought to the streets of Hartlepool, where German battleships fired on the town killing over 100 people.

To mark the centenary of the bombardment a special event has taken place at the town’s College of Further Education, with music, art, poetry, talks and displays – and featuring a contribution from the young people of Throston.

They live in Hartlepool just a couple of miles from where the shells landed and over the past few months have learned so much about the events that affected their home town and still influences their lives today.

They visited the Heugh Battery, which fired back at the German navy, to discover more about the shelling and also the contribution thousands of women in the North East made to the war effort through their work in munitions factories.  A woman’s place in society would never be quite the same again.

They went to Beamish Museum where they met local Trench Art collector Judy Sunter who told the story behind real war objects – such as gas masks – and about the art influenced by them.  At Beamish they were also treated to a behind the scenes tour by Michelle Ball, from the museum’s Learning and Community Participation, who told them how items are collected, recorded and stored.

She was also able to provide a hands-on heritage experience using objects from the life of Northumberland Fusilier Lt Reginald Elphinstone Baty, who was awarded the Military Cross in 1917 during a raid on a German trench.  Although he was wounded, the following year Lt Baty joined the Royal Flying Corps – the predecessor of the Royal Air Force.

The starting point of the young people’s exploration of the First World War was through A Soldier’s Life and The Home Front resource boxes designed by Hartlepool Cultural Services.Through their learning and discussions about life and death, propaganda, the Hartlepool bombardment and Trench Art, they developed their own art and understanding of what it meant to live and fight through a war, and how – even in the most desperate situations – people will turn to art to find expression.

You can read more about the historical background of the bombardment here.

Wor Lass 3 – August blog about WW1 Centenary Activities

News from the frontline – First World War news correspondent

This is the third blog tracking the First World War activities for schools and children around the North East. It is aimed at teachers and museums, heritage, archives and libraries educators developing programmes and activities to engage young people in the Commemoration.

There will be lots of new exhibitions opening, activity days and awareness raising events over the next year. If you know of anything coming up please send it across to Eileen at Bridge North East, your local War correspondent on the frontline of museum and heritage engagement in the region. Email eileen.atkins@sagegateshead.com, telephone 0191 4435315.

This Month: Action stations as regional Centenary activity increases over the Summer

As the weather heats up so does activity around the War Centenary. The 4^th August marks the 100^th anniversary of Britain officially joining the War and will be a day of regional and national commemoration activity.

Lights Out, 4^th August

Lots of North East organisations are getting involved with the national Lights Out initiative. Everyone in the UK is invited to take part in #LightsOut by turning off their lights from 10pm to 11pm on 4 August, leaving on a single light or candle for a shared moment of reflection. People can take part in whatever way they choose, marking the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War either at home or by attending one of the many events being organised around the country. Go to the website to see all the events from the region, including a candlelight supper at Durham School, a commemoration event at Durham Cathedral, and Lights Out Middlesbrough: www.1418now.org.uk/lights-out/

First World War at Beamish – 4^th, 5^th and 6^th August

Beamish are marking the anniversary with a range of activities for visitors. These will include soldier stories in the Pit Cottages, a display by the Wessington U3A War Memorial Project, family activities including poppy making and singing in the chapel. On the 6^th, there will be a parade through the museum by the community of Felling.

Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums: new ‘Wor Life’ team formed as exhibition programmes begin

TWAM now have a Wor Life project team set up to lead on their cross-venue exhibitions and events programme. The ‘Home for Heroes: South Tyneside in the First World War’ exhibition at South Shields Museum opened on 11^th July and the ‘Paintings of World War One’ exhibition at the Laing Gallery will be on display until October. Segedunum museum in Wallsend also has an exhibition called ‘Ships, Coal and Zeppelins – North Tyneside in the First World War’ currently on display.

Looking forward to seeing further exhibitions opening at Discovery and the Hatton Gallery in the Autumn. Follow this link for a blog about TWAM’s WW1 programmes: http://www.twmuseums.org.uk/latest/corporate/wor-life-1914-18-tyne-amp-wear-in-the-first-world-war.html

News from Northumberland

A new Northumberland co-ordination group has been formed which will ensure a joined up approach to WW1 Centenary commemoration in Northumberland. The group, hosted by Northumberland County Council, will meet every two months for the duration of the Centenary period. For more information contact James.Fell@northumberland.gov.uk

Tommy Sculpture is staying in Seaham

Residents of Seaham have raised over £60,000 to keep a sculpture that was on loan. Officially the sculpture by Ray Lonsdale is called 1101 but it is known locally as Tommy and its great news that this well loved piece of art will be staying put.

The next Wor Lass blog will focus on schools workshops for the new academic year. If you have anything you want highlighted in the blogs please get in touch.

Written by Eileen Atkins, Museums Manager Bridge North East

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Children’s Creativity & Caffeine: Steven Walker’s July Blog, 2014

With these next few blogs, I’ll be looking at how I make efforts to kick start creativity with my children (2 and 3 years old), and look at some of the challenges and gems from the local arts and cultural (and wider creatively engaging) offerings around the North East. In this blog I thought I’d set the scene:

Suspended in welcome sleep…“It’s time to play! Wake up, it’s time to go downstairs…Wake up, Daddy wake up! Daaaaady!”, is a common demand, enthusiastically belted out  most mornings in our house by my captors, pre 6am.  Little hands patting and shaking my sleep deprived shoulders (and face!), trying to wake me up. I just want to sleep, blissfully enjoying the sleepy ignorance of the torrent of tasks awaiting me which begin the moment I get out of bed. The kids find their way out of their beds and creep into mine like tiny cute zombies in the night. They wriggle, pull shapes, and have me teetering on the edge of the mattress, only hanging on by the top half of my body as a counter-weight. I could write a whole blog just on creative ways to use your body as a counter-weight to secure your place in the bed…luckily for you though, I will not.

How can they have such energy and enthusiasm for the day ahead, the second they wake up? I certainly do not.

I’m a lot grumpier and stressed out about things than I was before I bore dependents. When you have children, there is a continuum of worries and an insane scale of operational planning across all aspects of your life; which only lessen on a scale marked in decades as they grow and become more independent.

I’m 31 and have two small children. I’m a coordinator at Bridge North East. I have a sporty hobby outside of work. I consider myself to be a creative person (although I’ve entirely stopped creating things on a non-paid, for pleasure basis). Juggling priorities (and also getting through the ‘low priorities’ backlog) of work and family is a constant challenge.

Now then, parenting is about being the best mum or dad you can be in the circumstances you find yourself. Sometimes it’s simple. Other times it’s the hardest thing in world; it might not be what we anticipated or ever imagined. But that doesn’t really matter – because there’s no simple, straight forward way to do it. There’s not a Haynes Manual (Oh, wait, I think there is a joke one). The parents and the children are constantly learning what it is to be and sustain a family, and at times, it’s an artform to maintain ones mental mettle.

There’s a plethora of writing from parents and carers from across the world (see my colleagues very good blog here) on the infinite spectrum of cultural rights, being time poor, problem solving, and social labelling which working parents must navigate through to a) pay the bills, b) struggle to be effective in the workplace; and c) provide a nurturing environment for the children.

I, like my colleague, understand the importance of being surrounded by creativity, learning how to be creative, and experiencing the creativity of others. Creativity makes you smart (true fact), helps build a problems solving mind and helps us think and express ourselves with a diverse cultural context…All of which we have to do on a pretty zero-budget basis with my children. Doing so with activities at home, in gardens/farms, at free cultural venues, museums, and carefully calculated annual tickets for venues we can visit repeatedly throughout the year. Money is tight. Time is tight. Thinking space is tight with exhaustion always on the horizon. This is a common scenario for many parents… But why is it so challenging to create and protect time to nurture the imagination in our busy daily routines? – Especially as it’s what makes us human, has helped us evolve.

Creativity might be defined as putting things together in novel ways, or seeing the world, or a given problem, with fresh eyes. All of us need access to creativity to solve the problems of daily life, and I believe that everyone is creative – although some people are genetically predisposed to certain talents: an artist’s eye, for instance, or perfect pitch, or a writer’s way with words, etc.

We can’t give people talent, but we can train the eye, the ear and the mind, and we can help our children gain access to a creative way of seeing. We can also help them gain the concentration, competence, perseverance, and optimism necessary to succeed in creative pursuits.

With this in mind and after setting the scene, in the next blogs I’ll be looking at:

1. Some great art and culture I’ve taken the kids to; in the shape of Michael Rosen’s adaptation of Pinocchio, by Hiccup Theatre which we saw at Arts Centre Washinton
2. ‘Daddy day-care’
3. Family Explorers Project – A family engagement research project across regional arts and cultural venues
4. Sharing a few links for relevant reports and websites

Wor Lass 2 – First World War Centenary Activities: Focus on web resources

News from the frontline – First World War news correspondent

This is the second of a monthly blog tracking the First World War activities for schools and children around the North East. It is aimed at teachers and museums, heritage, archives and libraries educators developing programmes and activities to engage young people in the Commemoration.

There will be lots of new exhibitions opening, activity days and awareness raising events over the next year. If you know of anything coming up please send it across to Eileen at Bridge North East, your local War correspondent on the frontline of museum and heritage engagement in the region. Email eileen.atkins@sagegateshead.com, telephone 0191 4435315.

This Month: Focus on First World War Websites

There are so many great digital resources being developed and already existing regionally and nationally. Here are some of my favourites:

Lives of the First World War: www.livesofthefirstworldwar.org

This is a new part of the extensive Imperial War Museums resources, 1914.org is also great and the main Imperial War Museum website has downloadable teacher resources for the Centenary. ‘Lives of the First World War’ is a crowd sourcing style website where people can upload information about individuals who fought during the War. As more people upload information, it will become a comprehensive and quite personalised resource. It is also a great way for schools to share any research pupils are doing on their family and local community history too.

National Memory Local Stories: www.npg.org.uk/whatson/national-memory-local-stories

This is a new site from the National Portrait Gallery with short films about people’s local stories connected to portraits, including some about the First World War

First World War 100: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/first-world-war

This is a central place to view the immense collection from The National Archives of First World War diary entries, records and accounts and it is really accessible. They are also inviting people to tag documents with information they know about individuals and events to increase the public knowledge about them.

Tynemouth World War One Commemoration Project: www.tynemouthworldwarone.org

This is a very local project with national significance. Tynemouth suffered hugely with loss of life due to service during the War. This project has comprehensively and lovingly mapped and recorded all the servicemen who fought, their personal stories, recollections and ephemera relating to their lives both during the War and before and after. The website includes information on all of the men (and some women) who served and also some information about the Homefront efforts too and people involved in that.

North East War Memorials Project: www.newmp.org.uk

This is a great resource for anyone researching the names of servicemen listed on War Memorials in the North East. The group have dedicated years to tracking down all the Memorials in the North East and researching all the individuals listed on them to get as much information as possible.

Please get in touch with some of your favourite First World War related web resources!

 The next Wor Lass blog will focus on some of the forthcoming exhibitions and the lead up to the anniversary in August. If you have anything you want highlighted in the blogs please get in touch.

Written by Eileen Atkins, Museums Manager Bridge North East

Leila’s Blog: Time Poor – May 2014

Time poor… As a new mother and senior manager in a very busy team I am feeling really time poor at the moment. What with bedtimes, parental guilt and frantic weekend “fun”, alongside long days in the office and the responding to emails of an evening…I don’t feel like I have the time to do ANYTHING! I haven’t been to the theatre for ages (the last thing I went to see was White Rabbit, Red Rabbit at Live Theatre) and seeing a gig seems like it might be impossible! I have been to Baltic recently, and went to a comedy night at The Stand (a family member was performing). But cultural activity seems like a luxury that I just don’t have time for…or money. This just doesn’t sit right with me! Culture should not be a luxury…and what kind of role model am I being to my little girl? No doubt over the summer months she will be the recipient of many an outdoor gig (SummerTyne is very family friendly after all…and who doesn’t like sitting outside the Schooner listening to bands?), but I was constantly surrounded by theatre and music as a child, and it has stayed with me. I remember being in awe of shows at the Gulbenkian Theatre and honestly thinking that Peter Pan could fly when seeing the Christmas show at the Tyne Theatre; I travelled the region with Tyne and Wear TIE (specifically my Mum) watching shows about everything from the felling of the rainforest to apartheid. Watching my Mum perform on stage was a near weekly experience for me, and I am still as in awe of her performing today as I was back then. I realise that with the significant shift of the curriculum to when I was at school, and the lack of readily available cultural provision for young people, it is up to me to make sure my daughter has access to high quality cultural experiences. I want her to experience culture in the way that I did. I really want her to be a regular theatre goer and to get excited about seeing live bands. I sing to her every day and have since the day she was born; tambourines and bells are a significant part of her toy box; she is read to daily; and there is always music on in the house. But I have realised that being time poor and cash poor is no longer an excuse for me, and the fact that cultural activities are expensive and we are a  1 income family needs to not put me off taking her to the theatre and to gigs; I need to be much savvier in sniffing out deals and free stuff. I also need to go myself; she needs to see me get excited and passionate about great art, and the not so great art too. But we are a cultural family. I have worked in the arts for over 12 years, and been involved in the arts scene since I was really small. Time and money are still barriers for me. If that is the case then how can we, the cultural sector, expect families who don’t have that history with the arts take a risk on activities that cost significant amounts of money and use up our already dwindling family and free time? Are we doing enough to support families to take a risk with us and our programmes? By supporting adults to be passionate and excited by the arts has surely got to have a knock on effect to the young people they are connected with. Perhaps when organisations need to paper shows they could think of teachers as a willing audience – not all shows are suitable for young people to attend, but by having teachers more engaged with the arts then in turn more young people might become engaged? Also as arts organisations we have a responsibility to work not only with the more affluent families in our constituencies, but with those who are further down the scale. We also need to understand what would support those families to overcome the risk, both to their purse and their time. I have 2 day times a week to spend with my daughter, which needs to include all the fun stuff as well as all the boring things that life entails. These are also my only days off work, so anything I do needs to help me relax. I am not an exception to the rule; this is how many families operate these days.  Organisations perhaps need to be a little more aware of this when planning programmes for a family audience. And don’t get me started on weekday activities which are set up to welcome Fathers…but that is for another day!

Why do Gold Arts Award?

By Jane Gray

There are so many reasons I’d encourage any Bronze/ Silver Arts Award Adviser to do the Gold training; and so many reasons why it’s invaluable for young people.

I’ll confess now, that although I’ve trained many Gold advisers, I have only been a Gold Adviser for one young person; but I think it’s an interesting one.  This young man was 23, had completed his degree, but said that it was very theoretical, and he wanted some ‘real’ experience in the arts to support him in applying for jobs.

So, although we emphasise the fact that Gold has 35 UCAS points (and thereby could make the difference between getting the Uni course you want or not), it’s not just for young people who are applying for Higher Education.

It’s a clear progression from Silver, and follows the same format – Unit 1 being all about developing  your own knowledge and skills as an artist, and Unit 2 is plan, do & review a project.

It works in different settings, and with very different young people:

If you work at an arts organisation, you’ll value your young participants & audience members, and may run programmes, activities or schemes such as Young Ambassadors, Creative Apprentices or have young people on your Board.  Gold Arts Award gives a practical framework, and added value; the young people gain a Level 3 qualification and LOADS to talk about at interviews; your organisation is supporting Arts Council England to deliver Goal 5.  It’s win, win as far as I can see.

If you’re working in Education, Gold can work alongside AS/ A-Levels and any other qualification; work for one may stimulate work for another and vice versa.  The portfolios which are created for Gold are fabulous; because there is ownership, because they are focussing on things they want to do, the breadth and depth is there; there is a real sense of pride, which is evident when young people talk about the work they’ve done for Gold – vital for University or job interviews.

If you’re a freelance artist, a youth worker, running a Charity or Community Interest Company, Gold is appealing to participants, partners and supporters; you’re adding value and offering something tangible.  You may have wider aims than achieving Gold, but it is useful as a framework to use, and there are many transferable skills to take from it.

What are the transferable skills young people gain through doing Gold?

Communication, leadership, planning, analytical & review, time management, learning to work with others…

Don’t believe me? Take a look at these regional and national examples:

See the NICE film here.

Find out more from Jess – an Arts Award Gold achiever with Skimstone Arts here.

Take a look at some Gold portfolios here.

So, what’s stopping you?

There are several Gold Training dates throughout the year. Find out more and book here.

About me:

I am a freelance Arts Project Manager, and an adviser and trainer at all five levels of Arts Award.  I have also recently become an Arts Award Moderator. I am also a trainer for Artsmark.

ajanegray@outlook.com @ajanegray

Wor Lass 1 – First World War Centenary activities in the North East

News from the frontline: Wor Lass,  First World War news correspondent

2014 marks the 100^th anniversary of the start of the First World War and commemoration activities which will take place regionally, nationally and internationally. This is the first of a regular blog tracking the First World War activities for children and young people around the North East. It is aimed at teachers and museum, heritage, archive and library educators developing programmes and activities to engage young people in the Commemoration.

There will be lots of new exhibitions opening, activity days and awareness raising events over the next year. If you know of anything coming up please send it across to Wor Lass (Eileen at Bridge North East), your local War correspondent on the frontline of museum and heritage engagement in the Region.

One of the real stories that will be highlighted across the Centenary activities will be the role women played in the War. It seems appropriate in this first blog to mention Alice Schalek, a real First World War news correspondent. She was an Austrian Wartime photographer and journalist accredited by the War Press Office (a very rare thing for women back then). She reported right from the front line and observed some of the bloodiest battles. She used articles and lectures to tell the story of life for the ordinary soldiers.

Image of Alice Schalek from 1915 

Alice’s experiences and accounts really reflect the realities of War, as do so many of the first hand accounts which are being made more accessible during the Centenary through lots of great projects. All these resources will help us to acknowledge, recognise what happened, understand the silence, and help students ponder the loss of life and the consequences.

Spotlight on Sunderland

Planning for the Sunderland Air Show in July is underway now and there will be First World War activities, talks and information for all ages. The Show takes place on 26^th and 27^th July and organisations around the region are teaming up to create a themed area about the Commemorations.

This month, the War Games exhibition opens at Sunderland Museum. It will run from the 10^th May to 14^th September 2014. It is a national touring exhibition from the V&A Museum of Childhood and covers the theme of children’s games based on war from the 1800s to present day. The exhibition raises the question of is it appropriate for children to be playing games related to War, which has been quite topical over recent years with the perceived rise of realistic violence in computer games. There will be a special War Games Family Night on Saturday 17^th May including activities, games and re-enactment groups aimed at 6 year olds upwards and their families.

Wartime Art

Paintings and photography from the War are a great way of building in more cross curricula approaches in the classroom as well as having a very visual and instant impact.

The Laing Art Gallery are running a teachers’ CPD event on 13^th May about the paintings of WW1 in the lead-up to an exhibition at the Gallery later in the year. The Hatton Gallery’s anticipated Screaming Steel exhibition opening in September is being pre-empted with a series of specialist seminars about art during the War across May, see link for more details:

http://www.twmuseums.org.uk/hatton-gallery/whats-on/events/seminars-on-the-first-world-war.html

Fusiliers Museum in Alnwick

Nicola Day has now started in post at the museum and will be working on the ‘Call to Action’ project which will include an exhibition and programmes for communities and schools. They are currently recruiting volunteers to help out with the schools and public engagement programmes. For more information and to register to volunteer visit: www.fusiliersmuseum.org.uk or call Nicola Day 01665 602152, email activitiesfusnorthld@aol.co.uk

Breaking news from Darlington

Head of Steam, Darlington Railway Museum, have been successful in their HLF funding bid to run activities around the role of the North East railways in WW1. It will include memories and the heritage of railway workers during Wartime and a comprehensive programme of related schools workshops and loans boxes.

The next Wor Lass blog will focus on some of the great digital resources being launched in the region and more news on forthcoming exhibitions. If you have anything you want highlighted in the blogs please get in touch.

Written by Eileen Atkins, Museums Manager Bridge North East. If you would like to get in touch with any news and ideas for future Wor Lass blogs please get in touch: eileen.atkins@sagegateshead.com

 

Steven Walker: Design of the new Bridge North East website…a few thoughts.

“Designing the new website for Bridge North East was a real pleasure”. Having the chance to use my skills and experience as a graphic designer is something I will always jump at. I feel that when designing a website (or any large design project for a client), it is really important to have everyone in the client team involved who will be using and maintaining the site. Their opinions matter, and managing expectations and communicating direction of design early on is just as important as creativity in the process…Although, with this project, there were risks attached…if there were any client-designer challenges, timeline slippages, etc, I’d still be sat on the next seat along from my clients (AKA colleagues) as I’d be working on lots of other projects and daily tasks at the same time as designing the new site. When this trepidation creeps in I make myself feel better by getting out the old GANT chart (as is now customary) and forensically plan all the phases of work. #Bulletproof.

What do we want our new site to do?

We knew…we wanted to have a clean, contemporary, adaptable and easy to maintain website.

We knew…that in a world which is incredibly media intensive, designing and building good looking media is vital to releasing our digital potential, preferably with content which is optimised and delivered as quickly as possible to site visitors across multiple platforms.

We knew…that we wanted a site to be absolutely responsive to all devices and screen sizes.

We knew…that there was a developer who I’d previously worked with who has built a powerful, simple and user-friendly CMS which can deal with anything from the needs of a small, modest site – to bigger e-commerce platforms.

We knew…that our programmes need to have a clear digital arena to be communicated from.

We knew…that this is an important moment and opportunity to give a boost to the brand of Bridge North East. Our brand needs to make us known for doing what we do best and the digital platforms we design and develop are an essential delivery tool in communicating this…in communicating what we stand for.

So…I had an idea of how I wanted it to look and function, so I started designing the first drafts of the site, consulted with my Bridge colleagues so everyone collaborated, and right on time produced the new Bridge North East site – Doing so in collaboration with the brilliant and lovely Band X Media. I’ve designed 4 websites now on different CMS platforms, however band-X’s Freedom system has become a firm favourite to build out a site (once designs, themes and page templates have been rendered). Editing in Freedom is liberating when compared to other platforms I’ve designed towards, or simply used as a web systems user for other jobs. Freedom guided by a unique logic which really helps a designer to consider, navigate and apply media assets, which then influences our creative thinking on how users experience the Bridge North East site.

Now then, in relative terms, I’m new to web design, and have taken a career path which has had me working as a visual artist, illustrator, curator, art director, project manager, arts administrator and arts professional; I came to becoming a designer of products and projects for print and web more recently…Doing so after being influenced by a designer friend of mine who marries functional design, marketing nous, and artistic sensibility in his projects with flare, who made me feel that maybe becoming an ‘all round’ artist/designer with a digital specialism was for me. I love the fact that I no longer have to engage with the previous dark-art of trying to grapple (badly in my case) with the likes of Dreamweaver (an Adobe HTML web editor and development tool), and I can solely concentrate on design and work with an innovative developer (who can do all the coding and building).

What now? We’re now constantly pruning, regularly adding relevant content, and the Bridge NE Communications group (Myself, Leila d’Aronville and Kelly Shutler) are undertaking periodic content audits.

Favourite area on the new site? As well as the Artsmark pages (where there is lots of useful information for schools wishing to gain Artsmark), I really like the growing Video Library area where we’ve pulled together films made by us, our partners and included other inspiring films related to our work. Current favourites include:

Ken Robinson on creativity in Schools: An RSA animation of Ken Robinson’s uplifting talk on the need for creativity and divergent thinking in schools.

State of the Region by Northern Stars: A film by Northern Start highlights best practice in participatory film for young people in the NE.

NICE (Next Steps In Creative Education), Gold Arts Award: NICE is a 6 month opportunity for early stage visual artists in the North East who are aged 19 to 25.

Find the new site at http://www.bridgenortheast.com

Eileen Atkins’ Blog: First Project as an Arts Award Adviser

I did my Arts Award adviser training a few years ago and I remember I came away from the training all fired up about doing projects but then when I returned to the office my day-to-day work took over again. I had the adviser folders sat on my desk as a constant reminder but the further it got from the time I had done the training the less confident I was about embarking on an Arts Award project.

In March 2013, Circus Central in Newcastle began a Young Roots HLF funded project. Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums (TWAM)  and the Juice Festival came on board as partners and an amazing project was underway. The young people formed their own circus family alter ego as the Family La Bonche. Each family member had their own circus name and their own specialism and they were led by Madame La Bonche (aka Helen Averley from Circus Central). Over months the young people visited the archives, museums collections, and went on research visits to other circuses and performances. Their research took them as far back as 1237 spanning nine centuries of circus history.

The group created a special exhibition and performance which was shown at the Discovery Museum and Great North Museum during the Juice Festival called ‘The Fantastical Circus Scrapbooks and Collection of Arthur Fenwick’. Using their research, they created a set and exhibition animated by performances choreographed and performed by the young people. They also created a special Halloween themed performance at the Discovery Museum.

We decided to do Arts Award alongside this quite early on and I came onboard as their adviser as well as supporting them through my Learning Officer role at Discovery. The project lent itself naturally to Arts Award as they were researching an art form, finding out about different practitioners, creating an exhibition and performance, and sharing it with the audiences at the Juice Festival as well as in the form of a website and a book that they produced. As part of the Young Roots funding they were already producing diaries and records of what they were doing as it progressed.

Photo: part of the Arthur Fenwick circus collection at Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums

In November, once their performances had been completed, I started to panic. They had a vast amount of information, experience and evidence produced across the project. The biggest challenge was going to be condensing it down into the portfolio requirements for Arts Award and that was my job as their adviser. I knew all the young people had done more than enough work to complete their Silver Award and I really wanted them all to achieve it successfully. We sat down together and looked at the criteria again.

Then we set a date for moderation and it all became very real. We booked in for a joint moderation with some other groups from TWAM projects. This was great because we could share the cost and I had two other colleagues who were acting as advisers on projects at the same time so we could support each other. Over the next few months, Circus Central worked with me to help the young people get all their work in the right order to meet the different sections for moderation. We had several portfolio sessions where we all went through the criteria and checked the work evidenced everything. The portfolios were pretty huge even after we narrowed everything down, the best thing we did was number the pages and create a contents list which made the moderation and the paperwork I had to do much easier.

Photo: The Family La Bonche

The form that the adviser has to fill in for each portfolio is deceptively simple looking. It is just one side so you have no space to write anything which means you have to pinpoint exactly whereabouts in the portfolios the evidence for different sections are. I suddenly had a huge bulk of very important portfolios sat under my desk and I learnt a lot about circus acts myself by reading them over and over again.

On the day, I was surprisingly very nervous. Tony, the moderator, instantly put my mind at rest when I met him though because he was really friendly and very positive. It was quite a long process because he had work from three different projects to moderate and mine was the last one he looked at. It was a bit like waiting to be called into the headmaster’s office. A few hours into the moderation, the young people and Helen Averley arrived and Tony met with them. He was so lovely to the young people, genuinely interested in what they had achieved and very encouraging to them.

Finally I was called in for the verdict on the portfolios and to my immense relief they had all passed with flying colours. I actually didn’t need to be so nervous and having been through the experience once I feel much more confident about doing another project. In fact, I’ve signed myself up for Gold adviser training now so I can support the young people through their progression with Arts Award. I felt so incredibly proud of what they achieved and I am happy that I was able to play a part in their project and their qualification. I am looking forward now to supporting other young people through the process and am relieved that I have actually used my training now and have some experience as an adviser.

Photo: performance at Discovery Museum in October 2013

 

 

 

Leila’s Blog: April 2014

Now I am not an Über techy, but I do pride myself on keeping reasonably up to date with new technology and digital developments. I have been thinking a lot about the digital strand of Bridge work in our final year of phase 1.

When I first became interested in digital it was during a time when I was Media and PR Officer for Sage Gateshead. I was interested in the opportunities around digital as a means to communicate with a wider audience. Now I am also interested in digital in its creative form, and how it can develop a user generated journey into creativity if given the right platform. I am also very aware of my lack of understanding of ‘digital’, of the possibilities, and most importantly how we can and should be support cultural and education professionals to help young people challenge its perceived limitations.

I work in an industry with children and young people at the heart of it, and these children and young people are leaps and bounds ahead of us with their understanding of the possibilities of digital technologies.

A colleague told me of how her 6 year old son uses Mine Craft. At 6 years of age he has built his own world in Minecraft and does research online to be able to build more complex additions. At 6 his reading and writing is good for a child of his age, but to get around the more complex language barriers he might come across, using Google he has managed to work out how to use the voice activated search function to find Youtube clips so he can build more extravagant worlds. I was also quite encouraged to hear that he had built a theatre, and on top of that theatre he had built a swimming pool “just for the actors” – he clearly knows how to look after his artists! This is creativity, imagination and interpretation of the world at its best!

This story proves that young people are moving at a speed us older ones can’t even fathom. Children are growing up in an age where technology is no longer new; having a smart phone is something most children own by the time they have reached year 6 at primary school; and life without the internet seems like a weird and wacky concept – with cries of “what do you mean you would have looked it up in books?”

The arts and education sectors need to get with it! Of course there are child protection issues when it comes to using public digital platforms but this should not be an excuse that is used for not having a go. Cultural organisations need to work WITH young people to create more opportunities for them to interpret the world around them using technology. Local Authorities need to stop stunting their schools and libraries by making them adhere to unnecessarily strict firewalls and internet usage policies.

The fear that the internet and digital technologies is developing a generation of monosyllabic, un-socialised young people is old and archaic. Of course some people are going to sit in their bedroom playing computer games by themselves; but what is more likely is that they will be playing online with people from all over the world; or they’ll be part of a conversation around their love or hatred of a particular thing; they will learn to hone their critical analysis skills so they can review things that they love and hate; they will develop networks of people online, which may then meet up IRL (in real life); they will read e-books and watch theatre, films and listen to music online; they will get recommendations of things they might like from other people just like them…the list is endless.

Back to the world of Bridge North East – I am really excited by the possibilities of our Digital Seed fund which we will be launching in May. The fund is an opportunity for people to have a little bit of space to play and even to make mistakes *shocked face*. We really hope that people will develop unlikely partnerships and the developer community and cultural sector might team up, along with young people. Watch this space…

Leila’s blog: The aggregation of marginal gains

Reposted from 25 October 2012

Leila from the Bridge North East team shares her thoughts…

I have been in London today for a seminar around young people and the Stories of the World project. Some interesting points came up, some from Tyneside’s very own Holli McGuire. Holli’s point was if working with children and young people is to be truly valued and embedded within an organisation then there needs to be change in the way organisations view themselves, and this change needs to come from the top. At the Tyneside Cinema they have worked together so young people are at the heart of all their work and no one person has ‘responsibility’, they all do. It is thought about in their programming, in their education work and in their front of house and marketing functions.

Piotr Bienkowski made a great analogy around the British Cycling team and their Manager David Brailsford; he has taken the British Cycling team from strength to strength by looking at everything they do in minute detail and improving everything by a minimum of 1%, thus making everything better; he calls this ‘the aggregation of marginal gains’.

It was argued that this is what the cultural sector need to be thinking about when it comes to working with young people; although I think this is right, I think there are a couple of steps before that. When at the NE Gen residential the other week we talked about the fact that all young people don’t start in the same place, and I would like to suggest that all arts organisations don’t start in the same place when it comes to working with children and young people either. As a sector we need to get away from using the buzz words of the sector – we are the only ones who really understand them. I was talking to a colleague from another Bridge Organisation who said they had done a “Plain English” course to debug them of their buzz words – I think this is perhaps something we should all do. The fact is as a cultural sector there are many dialects and versions of the same language too. We should absolutely “say what we mean, and mean what we say” – quote from one of the young people at the seminar today. The other point I feel we need to address is the one of just rolling our sleeves up and having a go. Young people are not scary and they are not out to get us. As long as we are providing safe spaces for young people to grow and contribute then we should not be afraid of failure. Let’s learn together and make the most of the fantastic assets that young people are to the cultural sector (is asset a buzz word – perhaps?).

The other thing that has been weighing on my mind is Arts Award. We have some big targets (30% increase year on year), and people keep pointing out to us that this is a big target. I agree, but I do think that it is one we can achieve; I also think we should not get hung up on the target. The target is only important because it means young people are gettingrecognition and accreditation for being artists in their own right. Arts Award is only a framework – the only way it becomes boring or irrelevant is if the adviser delivering it comes across external challenges and/or doesn’t receive the support that they need. If projects are built with Arts Award in mind, and young people (and adults) are encouraged to think of it as something that is exciting and worthwhile, then I have a feeling that we will smash our target, and in the process be providing accreditation for lots of talented young people.

My challenge to you is to debug your strategies and communications of buzz words…if you already have young people involved in your work then think about all the little things and how you could make each one 1% better…if you don’t have young people involved in your organisation then find a young person and talk to them, ask them what they want from life and then do something about that within your organisation…if you already use Arts Award and love it then tell someone…if you have used Arts Award and weren’t impressed then get in touch and we can see whether we can help…and if you have never used Arts Award get online or come to speak to us and find out more about it.

Helen Green: Strong Voices in the Sunshine

Reposted from 8 July 2013

Bridge North East’s Helen Green talks about her experiences at the Strong Voices consortium meeting; blogging and what it might mean to her; and very initial thoughts on the National Plan for Cultural Education.

I’ve been in London for a consortium meeting for the Strong Voices project Bridge North East are a delivery partner in. At this meeting today we have all pledged to embed reflective practice into our work, to write, to blog, to think about what is important in our action research project, with everyone who is involved in this project, called Strong Voices. The purpose of this, to tell the story, to make sure that in addition to the important bean counting we are required to do for DfE, we connect to the human, remind ourselves why we do what we do, talk about what is important to us and connect ourselves into the work as much as we can.

I’m now sitting on the train coming back from that meeting, in the very lovely AND offices (including roof garden tended by Radio 4 Gardeners Question Time panel) and I am thinking about blogging (which I have never done) and reflecting on the meeting which has just been. I am struck by how unlike a meeting it felt – discussion, debate, talking about successes, sharing food, supporting each other in our challenges, fresh air (even in London) and a professional support structure and peer network which really cares about what we want to achieve.

In discussing impacts and outcomes, from my point of view wouldn’t it be great if the partnerships we forge through Strong Voices at a local level feel the same as the consortium; make people feel the same way I do now sitting on the train… We can run meetings differently…

If we are to change the way vulnerable and disadvantaged young people gain access to arts and cultural experiences (the main aim of Strong Voices) we have to be ready to run at things differently, change the status quo and look at our approach to this with fresh eyes; reflect on new relationships and be ready to bring fresh air to the table as well as food (for thought…) and supporting one another in the challenges and the successes.

The set up has happened and the work begins. I am looking forward to meeting our consortium again soon. Lets keep in touch and keep sharing/reflecting and inviting others to do the same with us.

Signing off now – awaiting me are gin, crisps and the National Plan for Cultural Education.

Highlight quote of the Cultural Education Plan so far:

‘While government should not direct, it can celebrate, encourage and facilitate. That is what this cultural education document seeks to do – not mandate like some Stalinist dream of a bureau of socialist realist production, but encourage and liberate as the best teachers do’

Good night… We all need our sleep as we’ve got a fight on our hands…!

Jenni’s December Blog

Reposted from 3 December 2012

Bridge North East works with Arts Council England to connect young people with great art and culture across the region – you can connect with their work on the Bridge NE webpage on this site, follow us Twitter and receive e-news updates.

In this regular blog the team takes a less formal tone…these blogs are a place to present new and sometimes still-forming ideas; opinions; experiences; excitements and the personal perspectives on being part of the lively Bridge North East team – as well as sometimes asking for your ideas, opinion, experiences, excitements and reflections.

Jenni, Creative Apprentice on the Bridge North East team shares her thoughts on Quality, tells of a recent youth event, and helps us learn what Bridge North East is all about.

All Bridge Organisations have a core aim of improving the quality of arts provision for young people in our respective regions. My team here at Bridge North East were tasked with hosting a young people’s quality event, working with The University of the First Age to facilitate the debate; and the other 9 regional bridge organisations to recruit young people – both engaged and not engaging with arts and cultural activity.

As Bridge North East’s Creative Apprentice and a young person who engages with arts and culture as a participant and a young leader, I was asked to get involved as a peer facilitator in the event.

Before this I worked on the event preparations with the rest of the team – mostly e-mailing hotels constantly shifting room numbers and names, as well as hunting down suitable brochures for the welcome packs. After spending a day putting all 80 of them together in our little office we regularly suffered bag-slides for a few days, anyone opening the door made them overflow in a brightly coloured avalanche all over any available floor space.

We ended up with a total of 45 young people from all over the country and a team of 9 local young people acting as peer facilitators –with Caz Brader and Sarah Burges from the UFA (University of the First Age ) overseeing the day. The UFA piloted the timetable for the day on our team of peer facilitators as a training day and we were given advice and props to work with.

We decided that since we were inviting guests from all over England we should make the most of our unique regional features, and since our accent is amazing and the working title of “The Young People’s Quality Event” was not, we decided on the name “How do we Know it’s Propa Belta?” !

We wanted to encourage the young people to feel open about using and sharing their own dialect and opinions. The training and insight the UFA provided us with was fantastic – but the effect of their influence on the day was unbelievable. The debates were fully in the hands of the 45 young people, with us assisting them with their focus and really, just asking the right questions.

The most brilliant thing was listening to them, completely uncensored and honest as an intelligent, diverse group of young people with the same desire as the adults co-ordinating the project for quality.

The ideas that came out of the process felt simplistic and fresh, there was a lot of the expected talking and listening – but there was an overwhelming level of thought and context emerging too. The stories that came with these were really brilliant for providing insight, for instance there was an artistically inclined lad in my group with a story about how his organisation uses social networking and instagram. They use instagram on their twitter account to provide more visually appealing imagery; this is used to broadcast what they’re setting up, where they’re doing the event and content which provides the opportunity to develop a sense of personality and humour in their account. We agreed that a sense of humour and imagery appeals in a twitter account; it makes the organisation feel relatable for young people – essentially it’s a way of extending and advertising that lovely concept of a sense of belonging and ownership online. The organisation that does this apparently finds it very effective, so the group challenged why this was. It all comes back to how one well presented, relevant image has the power to communicate so much more quickly and clearly in its intended context to viewers than lines and lines of text and jargon can. As people working in a creative industry, even in office based jobs we need to remember; we need to be creative ourselves! This is something I’m taking back to Bridge North East with me, definitely.