Arts for the looked after

Between October 2012 and March of this year Falkirk Community Trust arts team worked with Falkirk Council's Library Support for Schools and Social Work Services on the Reading Champions project, to provide young people in our children's homes with an opportunity to participate in an arts and literacy project. Funded by Awards for All, the project aimed to improve long-term opportunities for looked after and accommodated young people in the Falkirk Council area and to promote arts engagement, reading and the services libraries can offer.

Working with vulnerable young people aged 11 to 18 who have experienced the trauma of loss, a programme of activities was delivered over a five-month period in a library setting, with professionals from the arts including animators, storytellers and musicians. We worked with seven (self-selected) young people over the period, who attended weekly evening workshops at Meadowbank Library in Polmont. With input from the young people, we decided that the focus would be on storytelling and animation. We knew that they were interested in creating a film project and felt that the creation of an animation would allow them to explore and present stories in an anonymous and ‘non-attributable’ way.

We took care to create a positive, upbeat, glitzy event, giving the group an opportunity to talk about their own experience of the project and present their work

We were lucky to find artists who had experience of working with hard-to-reach young people and had professional qualifications in social work and community education, as well as a track record in creating high-quality work. The storytellers, Ruth Kirkpatrick and Claire Mulholland, created a strong process for the young people to explore stories drawn from ancient mythology and Scottish tradition, working with them to collaboratively create their own story ‘The Flying Misery’. Wrighteye Animation worked with the young people to create an animation, ‘Teardrops on the Wings’, based on their story, which evolved into an interesting take on the workshop process. Music became an integral part of the creation of the animation and two of the participants were particularly interested in this aspect.

The project was not without its challenges. Attendance was variable and we could not rely on having the same group in attendance every week, for a variety of reasons including complicated family contact arrangements. There were sometimes tensions between the young people, who were drawn from different care facilities across the region. We were unable to engage one of the care homes at all, despite constant encouragement and reminders.

The young people attended with their support workers and we encouraged the workers to stay in the sessions and participate, although this did not always happen. The project was reliant on the willingness of support workers to bring them along to the weekly sessions and the maintenance of momentum between workshops. This was made more difficult by complicated shift patterns, which meant that support workers varied from week to week, depending on rotas and shifts.

An unexpected benefit to the project came in the form of James, a project assistant working with the Wrighteye team. James was a recent care leaver who had been involved as a participant in a previous Wrighteye project. Although he did not immediately ‘disclose’ himself as a care leaver, James quickly became an integral part of the project, acting as a role model and mentor for the young people, encouraging them to try new things and helping them to overcome initial reservations or scepticism. The project would have been very different without James and he was a crucial factor in its success.

The world premiere of the film animation took place for an invited audience at Falkirk Town Hall in March. The young people invited family and friends to the ceremony and we also invited a range of professionals involved in their care, including social workers, psychologists, council and health officials. We took care to create a positive, upbeat, glitzy event, giving the group an opportunity to talk about their own experience of the project and present their work. The event was an overwhelming success, with incredibly positive feedback which created a real sense of pride and achievement for the young people involved.

Feedback from the young people and their care workers makes it clear that this project had a positive impact on those involved. It gave the young people an opportunity to develop interests and skills in the arts and to achieve something they are proud of. Yvonne Manning (Principal Librarian), Jenny Kane (Team Manager, Leaving Care) and I continue to work with the young people, finding opportunities for them to continue their engagement with the arts and with reading. The group has been involved in presenting the project at various council and Education Scotland events. The film will be shown in November as a trailer to ‘The Selfish Giant’ at the Hippodrome Cinema in Bo’ness. We are working hard to find funding to take the project to the next stage and involve more of Falkirk’s looked after young people in future activity.

Lisa Kapur Forde is Arts Development Officer for the Falkirk Community Trust.
www.falkirkcommunitytrust.org