Cultural Citizens Programme – regional updates on pilot delivery

Following on from our recent blog post about the launch of the Cultural Citizens Programme (CCP), we have updates from each of the three organisations delivering the pilot who tell us about how it’s going so far and the activities they are doing with young people in their region.

The young people involved in the CCP are being offered a range of cultural activities such as free visits to local plays, behind the scenes access to museums and galleries and exclusive trips to world class venues. All the work that the young people do will be accredited through Arts Award, so they will finish the programme with a qualification to recognise their achievements.

A New Direction (delivering in Barking & Dagenham)

Our CCP model in Barking and Dagenham will support 300 young people to create and negotiate their own cultural maps of London. In collaboration with artists, young people will work together over a five month period to develop a bespoke quality matrix and debate and discuss the value and role of arts and culture to young Londoners. They will then be planning and embarking upon a series of trips and visits across London’s cultural landscape, working in partnership with venues and institutions to create new, integrated ways for young people to experience what the city has to offer.

We are looking for arts organisations, venues and institutions in London who would like to work with us to deliver a series of incredible trips, visits, tours, talks and experiences for young people that are different to their usual offer. We have a budget to make this happen – if Supporters are interested in getting involved, please contact Steven Smith, CCP Producer.

Kids in Museums (delivering in Birmingham)

Young People have already started to Takeover Birmingham!

Takeover Birmingham is a CCP pilot and will work with over 200 young people aged 11 - 14 who have not had significant engagement with the arts before. 20 organisations spanning the whole range of Birmingham’s cultural landscape will form a Takeover Birmingham Club. Each Club will have a bespoke programme of activity that will offer the young people meaningful, decision-making roles in organisations, which will give them greater buy-in to culture as part of their lives.

In December we celebrated the launch of Takeover Birmingham by inviting the Takeover Birmingham Design Team from Rockwood Academy to come along to a special backstage tour of Birmingham Royal Ballet.

The group of 16 students had worked together with artist Luce Choules to create the project's logo. Wearing their Takeover Team t-shirts, the students from year 7 & 8 revealed the logo they've created. The teenagers from Alum Rock had a behind the scenes tour and met the dancers in their first ever visit to the ballet.

The Takeover Birmingham Clubs have now been announced and you can find details about the different projects on our new website.

Curious Minds (delivering in Liverpool & Blackpool)

Curious Minds is launching the CCP pilot in the north west, working with 200 young people from 10 schools in Blackpool and Liverpool.

The young people will be set the challenge to tell us what could be done to make arts and cultural experiences more appealing and relevant to them. Over the next six months and with the support of a ‘Culture Coach' they will choose, plan and attend five different arts and cultural experiences and complete a portfolio of their experiences, to achieve a Bronze Arts Award qualification. Of these experiences:

• one must be free to get in
• one must be local to their school
• one must be outside of their local area
• one experience must involve actively taking part
• one visit must be a museum, heritage site or library
• one experience should have a WOW factor!

A reminder of what the CCP is

In August 2016 the Department for Culture Media and Sport set up the Cultural Citizens Programme.

The programme is being led by Arts Council England and delivered as a pilot by A New Direction (in Barking and Dagenham), Curious Minds (in Liverpool and Blackpool) and Kids in Museums (in Birmingham).

If the pilot is successful, it will be rolled out across the country to thousands of other young people.