Pros and Cons.

For the PLUS Summer Programme the Arts Practitioners, Organisational Workers and Art Workers were all selected and provided by Charnwood Arts. The Basic Skills Tutors, taxi drivers, some of the Learner Support Workers and, most importantly, Learners, were provided through bodies affiliated to PLUS. Volunteers were organised through a combination of both.

The project had a relatively short run-in and, although most people did the same initial days of PLUS training, the project was a pilot. So there was much problem solving on the fly. From the first day the Basic Skills Tutors and Artists had to redefine their roles.

The Basic Skills Tutors were originally briefed to keep notes on which skills the art projects were helping Learners to develop, provide literacy support and development for the Learners and to provide a link back to the organisations responsible for the Learners.

The Lead and Support Artists were briefed that they would deliver the art activities and also work one-on-one with the Learners to improve their ability to develop their skills independently. This left a void with no one officially responsible for the behaviour of the Learners and both parties assuming the other was going to deal with it. There had been a behavioural policy drawn up before the projects, but it soon became apparent that the reality of the Learners' behaviour made it redundant.

Having two separate bodies involved in keeping the project running was a problem. Emma, the central contact from YOT, was also due to give birth at the beginning of the project! It took many misunderstandings, miscommunication and discussions before a workable status quo was maintained. The continuity of having Basic Skills Tutors and Support Artists working throughout the projects was the saving grace here. By the end of the six weeks the understanding they had developed was invaluable and kept situations in check that otherwise could have brought the project to a halt.

At times the information flow between The YOT and Charnwood Arts led directly to many problems. For example, an Artist could be working with a Learner not knowing they were dyslexic. A Learner could be asked to leave a project due to "bad" behaviour but a Basic Skills Tutor could have confidential knowledge explaining that and ask for their return.

It was obvious in the review of the project that future work would benefit from a much longer lead-in, with closer planning between the two different organisations responsible for the Learners the arts programme. Knowledge sharing between both groups will need to be more direct and communication and decision making needs to be clearer.

One of the key staff / Learner relationships was that between the Learners and the taxi drivers. The journey time at the beginning of the day spent away from home and the projects was an opportunity for the Learners to interact with each other freely. The drivers became trusted friends and confidants as they were seen as relatively independent figures. They also helped to organise football games at lunch time and food and drink in the morning. The Learners had a lot of respect for the drivers and it was the litmus test for how serious a problem was if the Learners gave the drivers trouble too.

The Final Day

The final day of the six weeks of projects was an illustration of the greater picture. The day had been planned as an opportunity to get everyone back together from both the Animation and Music projects, to take part again in some of the activities that had been the most fun.
Most of the Learners who had stayed to the end of the projects came along and one of the girls from the Visual Arts course also attended.

The Learners had selected Circus Skills as an activity they wanted to repeat so Sue came along in the morning, football was on offer at lunch and Kieran was rushing around trying to set up big screen Tekken for his playstation. There had been other activities requested by the Learners, but their selective amnesia kicked in come the day, or the requests were a smokescreen. For example, computer animation had been requested, but the real desire was to surf the internet and play games.

The day started with Sue's Circus Skills. Unfortunately, being at Melton instead of Brooksby meant we were out in the courtyard where we'd spent most of our time trying to enforce the "No ball Games" rule. Now we had twenty kids juggling, spinning plates, stilt walking and it wasn't long before it turned into a riot of bursting the modelling balloons in people's ears and playing frisbee with the juggling hoops. When a passing old man nearly had his (possibly false) teeth knocked out, the activities were called to halt. Even Paul was suggesting driving the worst two offenders home.

The general behaviour didn't improve until Tekken was up and running. So, other than the usual suspects with the usual behaviour, there were good elements to the day. Seeing all the kids dropping their attitude and playing was as refreshing as always, right up until it got out of hand... as always.

At the beginning of the day, each of the Learners was asked to vote for another Learner who they considered to have got the most out of being on the project. Later each of the Workers added three nominations for Learners across all projects. At the end of the day everyone got together and the person with the most votes was presented with a book. The only qualifier was the winner had to have votes from both Learners and Workers. Peg was the worthy winner and seemed pleased with the book of Optical Illusions. It emerged later that Slim had also got the same number of votes, but two of his had got stuck together. Dizzee and Ka both had a good share of votes and Ka was outraged at not winning. Ironically, he might have done if one of his best friends had bothered to vote, instead of writing "Loser" on his ballot paper. Nice work.

Images and Names

Almost all of the images on this site have been taken by, or are of work created by, the Learners.

All the Learners are refered to by nicknames they gave themselves, or names accociated with them. Several of the Workers were also given nicknames by the Learners.

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