Press Releases

Creating Chances

Arts Interventions in Pupil Referral Units and Learning Support Units

by Richard Ings
with photographs by Adrian Fisk

Published by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
Price: £6.00 | Paperback | 48pp |
12 colour photographs | ISBN: 1 903080 01 0

Publication Date: 18 October 2004

A new book published today explores the impact of creative projects on the work of Pupil Referral Units and Learning Support Units around England. Creating Chances is an important contribution to the literature on how arts interventions can help to reach the marginalised and excluded child. It provides the teaching profession with fresh ideas and new approaches to making connections with our most troubled young people. And it examines the role of the artist as a catalyst for creativity and personal development.

'The arts are so successful because there’s no right or wrong answer. A lot of these students’ problems come down to low confidence… Discovering that they can create something that you think is brilliant, and then seeing it pinned up on the classroom wall, can change their outlook instantly.' Kate Howell, Art Teacher, Rastrick High School, West Yorkshire

Over a twelve-month period, writer and researcher Richard Ings visited a dozen centres that participated in First Time Projects, a programme devised and funded by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and Arts Council England, with additional support from the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. The projects, which lasted from a few weeks to a year or longer, drew in a wide variety of artists, from ceramicists to dancers, and encompassed a range of arts practices, from making vinyl banners to devising drama. They involved groups of various sizes, from Years 1 to 11, across England – from St Helens on Merseyside to Guildford, from Yorkshire to the suburbs of South London. What the centres had in common was that this was their ‘first time’ of working with a live artist.

Ings talked to the teachers and the learning support staff, the artists and arts companies, and the young people themselves about the benefits and challenges of engaging in arts practice. How do pupils who have been at risk of exclusion from mainstream education, sometimes most of their school lives, react to the presence of artists – adults who often bring unorthodox methods of communication and expression into the classroom? How easy is it for teachers and other school staff to find common ground with artists and apply what they have learned from them to their own, more traditional relationships with young people? And how do artists themselves cope with the challenge of working with students who often have a limited attention span and who define themselves either by acting out their frustrations or by withdrawing?

‘We did the whole piece in a single day. Scott was nice – he gave us enough help, but not too much… We liked the hands-on stuff, not just reading about it. Having artists in made it easier. They told us what we were doing wrong but it was different from teachers telling us what to do and what not to do.’ Year 11 pupils, Langdon Hills Integrated Support Service Centre

‘They get frustrated very easily. As soon as that happens, it spirals out of control… Today, though, I felt that they really trusted me. It was the first time they’ve said thank you to me. Yes, the work is hard and at the end of the day my mind wants to blow up with concentrating so hard and giving them so much encouragement, but I love the results. Every time I finish a session with them, I feel euphoric.’ Liliana Montoya, Ceramicist

The encouraging picture that emerges from the relatively informal encounters reported here enhances our understanding of the social and educational value of the arts, and will complement more rigorous longitudinal research that the Foundation has recently commissioned. Ings comments: ‘The case studies here are not intended to be read as detailed and rounded assessments of each project but cumulatively – as reports from the ‘front line’, revealing particular aspects and general themes of this whole area of work across the country.’ Equally, Adrian Fisk’s photographs are not just a record of particular projects but provide a visual impression of the concentration, creation and celebration characteristic of so many of them.

Simon Richey, Assistant Director (Education) at the Gulbenkian Foundation, comments: ‘One of the strengths of this report is in its capturing of moments of change. Such changes, the triggering of one sort of behaviour by another, the achievement of emotional growth through participation in an arts project, is at the heart of this work.’

Creating Chances is of vital interest to professionals working towards social inclusion, including those responsible for funding and setting education policy. Its publication is intended to encourage better and wider use of creative approaches in PRUs and LSUs across the country.

For further information and review copies please contact: Felicity Luard or Louisa Hooper
Tel: 020 7908 7604, Fax: 020 7908 7580
E-mail: info@gulbenkian.org.uk

Creating Chances is available through booksellers in the UK or can be ordered from Central Books:
E-mail: orders@centralbooks.com
Website: www.centralbooks.co.uk

Notes to Editors

1. Richard Ings is a freelance writer and researcher in the arts with a particular interest in young people and creativity. Among his publications are The Arts Included, a report on the conference that launched the First Time Projects programme (Nick Randell Associates: 2002); Mapping Hidden Talent, the first book to examine grassroots youth music projects across the UK (The Prince's Trust/National Youth Agency: 1998); Creativity: Caught or Taught? on new creative approaches to the school curriculum (CAPE UK: 2000); Funky on your Flyer on extending young people’s access to cultural venues (Arts Council England: 2001); Taking it seriously: Youth arts in the real world (National Youth Agency: 2002); and Connecting Flights: Debating Globalisation, Diaspora and the Arts (British Council: 2003). Most recently, NESTA has published The Inventive Answer, an essay on creativity and young people (2004).

2. Adrian Fisk began his photographic career documenting the road protest movement in England in the mid 1990s. He went on to record the illegal rave scene in London then moved further afield to work in India where among various subjects he has documented the human hair trade, dowry abuse and the night rat killers of Bombay. He is a member of the international collective of street photographers in In-Public.com . His work has appeared in many magazines including the Guardian Weekend, the Independent's Saturday and Sunday magazines, ID, Eight and a variety of publications across Europe.

3. Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (Portugal) UK Branch, established 1956, has a reputation for recognising and initiating innovative ideas. It commissions and publishes books or reports which reflect and promote current priorities, concerns and areas of interest arising from its UK funding programmes in contemporary arts, education, social policy and Anglo-Portuguese cultural relations. Recent titles include Passport: A framework for personal and social development by Jane Lees and Sue Plant, Social Enterprise in Anytown by John Pearce and Rethinking Families by Fiona Williams. For more information contact info@gulbenkian.org.uk.

4. The First Time Projects scheme was established in 2001 by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in collaboration with Arts Council England. The scheme, which ran for three years, receiving generous support from the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation in its second and third years, offered small grants to teachers in Pupil Referral Units and Learning Support Units to initiate artists’ residencies for the first time. It attracted a total of 350 applications, dispensed £135,000 in grant aid and assisted nearly 50 projects throughout England. In the third year of the scheme, there was a dramatic rise in the number of applications – a total of 209 compared to 81 in the previous year – which suggested that teachers were increasingly recognising the value of this work.

5. In April 2005, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation will publish Serious Play, a Gulbenkian-funded study by the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) of arts activities in Pupil Referral Units and Learning Support Units.

6. Creating Chances is published by Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation on 18 October 2004 in paperback, priced at £6.00.

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