Richard Ings welcomes a new film about arts work with excluded pupils.

Capturing the learning from participatory and educational arts projects – as well as setting down a record of their challenges and achievements – is vital. If they are rigorous and honest enough, conventional evaluation reports can do this in a way that will benefit the artists and organisations involved as well as satisfying funders that their money has been well invested. As such reports are not usually distributed more widely, however, it will generally be up to magazines like this one to make the wider arts community aware of projects that have something special to teach practitioners.

Occasionally, an arts organisation or a funding body will commission a fuller account of such work, in the hope that a well-distributed and promoted publication will influence practice for the better. For example, in the area of arts interventions in Pupil Referral Units (PRUs) and Learning Support Units – institutions set up for young people excluded from mainstream education – the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation has published two major complementary reports recording and evaluating this area of work, and also commissioned the publication of an independent guide to setting up such projects (see below).

Then, partly to mark the end of a decade of championing and funding this area of work and partly to try something new (an article of faith for this particular funder), Simon Richey, the Gulbenkian Foundation’s Education Director, having enlisted the support of Arts Council England, decided to set up a project specifically in order to produce a short film about the pleasures and pains of arts work with excluded young people. This film could then be distributed to education and arts professionals as a fly-on-the-wall demonstration of what is actually involved in such work.

Everything Stopped, the DVD that has resulted from this commission, brings the viewer into the most direct contact possible with the realities of this kind of arts project, short of actually attending the sessions in person. Dan William’s film documents a three-week intensive residency undertaken at the Arts Depot in Barnet led by Protein Dance, a professional touring dance company, with students from the Pavilion Study Centre in Totteridge, North London.

Although Protein had run two successful projects with PRUs in Hornchurch and Doncaster, the company was still relatively fresh to this area of work – and this made it, for Simon, a good choice as a model for artists and companies who might be unsure of the challenges. Equally important to the project was the enthusiasm and active involvement of the Arts Depot and its staff throughout the process and, not least, in staging the public performance. Initiatives like these depend on a good chemistry between partner organisations and between professional staff and those they are working with. This is well illustrated in the film, where the viewer soon realises that any artistic progress depends not so much on the teaching and learning of specific skills but on the way in which the various participants successfully interact and negotiate with each other.

If the final production, which is the climax of the film, demonstrates the remarkable artistic results that such projects can achieve, the documentary as a whole shows that this ‘product’ is not the whole story or, indeed, the main purpose of the intervention.

The title of the film comes from a comment made early on by one of the participants: the day that he was excluded from school was the moment when “everything stopped”. What emerges most vividly from the fly-on-the-wall observations of rehearsals, meetings, arguments and epiphanies is the sense that these young people are not simply learning to move across a stage, but finding out how to move forward in their lives. It is a wonderful irony that the dance piece the group comes up with is performed in school uniform and set in a classroom, as if these newly confident young people are reclaiming what they had rejected (or, perhaps equally accurately, what had rejected them).

In the final sequences of the film, their teachers and their families and friends seem stunned at what they have witnessed. “This is what they should be doing – they are different kids,” says one teacher. “It’s as if they escaped into a different world,” says another. The participants themselves seem transformed. “We ain’t rejects, we’re stars!” one announces proudly. Such comments are startling given what we have heard at the start of the film: “I’m not confident at being seen”, “I can’t learn as quick”.

For those unconvinced by such transformations and who believe that short-term arts projects like this have no lasting or measurable influence on those who take part, it is salutary to learn that two of the group – including the young man for whom ‘everything had stopped’, and who left school with no GCSEs – have since gone on to study Performing Arts at Barnet College as a direct result of their participation in the project.

The teachers on screen certainly seem startled by the changes they are witnessing – “I’ve never seen them working together like this before,” says one; “I’m open-mouthed,” says another after watching them rehearse. For those who are sceptical of the longer-term effect of such projects on institutions like PRUs, it is worth noting that the head teacher in this case believes that the project has had a lasting impact. She reports that staff at the Pavilion are now more aware of the value of creative activity, and that her students are much more willing to get involved in arts programmes. As a result, the arts are now more firmly embedded in the curriculum. The centre has also recently completed a new project with Tiger Monkey, a multi-disciplinary arts company committed to working with young people at risk.

And for those who believe that artists involved in such projects have little to learn or gain from working in this way, it is worth considering the fact that the two experienced freelance dancers who were brought in by Protein for the project, Phil Hill and Amy McGann, have been so inspired by it that they have set up their own dance company, Jump Start Move, in order to commit to this kind of work full-time and develop their own company approach.

There is no doubt that Everything Stopped is a valuable and, so far, unique addition to the growing body of evidence for the multiple benefits of arts interventions with excluded, vulnerable and challenging young people. It goes well beyond simple celebration and advocacy to show that out of the (very real) challenges of such work come moments when things – and people – change and, not incidentally, art is made.

How to obtain a copy of Everything Stopped

The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation is making copies of Everything Stopped freely available to anyone with an interest in this work. To obtain a copy simply email your request, together with your postal address, to Nick Randell Associates youth arts consultancy at: dvd@nrassociates.co.uk

Other publications on arts interventions in PRUs:

Bob Adams et al, The Art of Engagement: A Handbook for Using the Arts in Pupil Referral Units (darts [Doncaster Community Arts], 2007)

Richard Ings, Creating Chances: Arts Interventions in Pupil Referral Units and Learning Support Units (Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, 2004)

Anne Wilkin, Caroline Gulliver and Kay Kinder (National Foundation for Educational Research), Serious Play: An evaluation of arts activities in Pupil Referral Units and Learning Support Units (Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, 2005)