Programmes > Arts > Kirklees SAC 2010
Kirklees Youth Offending Team’s third annual Summer
Arts College which was held in July and August 2010
exceeded all expectations in terms of the students’
personal development, self belief and artistic and
academic achievements.
The college was run in partnership with Serendipity
Arts, a local arts education organisation. It is an
annual event that young people,
most of whom are on Intensive Supervision and
Surveillance Orders or on Licence following serving
a custodial sentence, attend for 5 hours a day, 5
days a week for 6 weeks. A total of 13 young people
attended Summer Arts College this year.
Throughout the 6 weeks the young people took part in
a variety of workshops including painting with
music, puppetry, creative writing, photography and
stained glass window making and went on a variety of
cultural field trips to help their understanding of
the arts and employment opportunities available.
They also worked as a team with professional
photographers and film makers and local poet,
Craig Bradley, to script, direct, record and act
in a film which explores relationship perceptions
and the potentially disastrous consequences of drug
misuse and dealing on families and friendships.
Kirklees Youth Offending Team’s first Summer Arts
College in 2008 was extremely successful and was
rated within the top five colleges nationally with
all nine young people completing the programme and
achieving their Bronze Arts Awards. Last year they
were the highest achieving college, with ten
students gaining their Bronze Awards and nine of
them also achieving Silver Arts Awards. This year’s
young people have exceeded this achieving 13 Bronze
Awards and 9 Silver Awards. They also took literacy
and numeracy tests at the start and at the end of
the college which demonstrated considerable
improvements over the six weeks.
Summer Arts College 2010 culminated on 23rd
September with a celebration event for the young
people and their parents at which their film,
photography and art work was exhibited and they were
presented with their certificates.
Throughout the 6 weeks of the college, local Leeds
photographer
Kirsteen Ashton documented the young people’s
personal journeys on film and producing a collection
of shots selected from over 3500 images as part of
an artistic project which was initially shown in
November and December 2010 at Project Space, Leeds.
The exhibition combines photographic images with the
young people’s artwork and short film 'A Different
Window' - the concept being to illustrate the
dangers of illegal high M-Cat from a young person's
perspective. Collectively the work questions the
approach of the justice system, calling for a
greater investment in our young people’s future.
The
Summer Arts College exceeded all expectations in
terms of the students’ personal development, self
belief and artistic and academic achievements.
Kirklees Youth Offending Team plan to provide a further Summer Arts College in 2011. It is hoped to run this parallel to a similar project in Botswana with the theme of ‘Pathways into Adulthood.’
.
