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SOCIAL REALITY : The Taming
of the Crew
This is a local story that we hope will have a long term positive
effect on the community that a group of ten young men came from,
on the young men themselves and the statutory agencies that deal
with young offenders in Warwick District. Our involvement has been
a component, which has led to an encouraging beginning of these young
men re-integrating themselves back into being accepted within their
community. We have been supported throughout this process by the
Police, Youth Service and Warwickshire DAAT and other statutory agencies.
Hybrid:arts deliver a two-day per week training course in Music
Technology for 36 weeks as part of an LSC funded franchise to Warwickshire
College. The recruiting process for this year’s course broke
from the ordinary pattern in a very unexpected, but encouraging,
fashion…
The recruitment process normally involves young people being referred
to our courses through organisations dedicated to helping disaffected
young people. This was all going to plan when the first young man
came through to us via The Connexions Service, however we were caught
by surprise when, during the following two weeks, he brought with
him another 9 young men from the Lillington area. All of the men
independently professed their interest in joining the course, and
asked for referral forms to complete. This was the first instance
of mass self referral that Hybrid:arts have experienced since forming
back in February 2003. It filled us with confidence that our
innovative service is being recognised amongst the most influential
members of society, our target audience – young people in the
NEET group. It was also proof that word of mouth is the best form
of marketing. At that early stage we did not know how challenged
we would be by this cohort of young people and how much distance
would be travelled by everybody involved.
Hybrid:arts deliver unique training packages base on our distinctive 5
f’s model:
- Fun: the initial route to learning starts
off being fun and engaging
- Five: five trainees to one trainer
- Funk it up: a professional
open-plan working environment
- Fantastic equipment: industry standard
equip trainees can walk out of our studio into the BBC/professional
recording studio/graphic design practice - and they’d use
the same software
- Food: trainees at Hybrid:arts have a food budget
with which they take it in turns to take orders for the rest
of the group within budget, ring through to a local sandwich
shop and pick them up. This works on the premise that no one
can work when they’re hungry,
particularly young men.
These self referring young men, aged between 16 and 18, formed
a volatile group that, at times, seriously challenged Hybrid:arts
and the Connexions staff downstairs. For example, within the first
week of training, issues such as spitting at Connexions workers,
giving false names and the burning of initials on the ceiling of
the hallway became part of the whole fire fighting experience of
having them in the building.
In response, Hybrid:arts contracted Harrington Bembridge (Aitch)
as an additional trainer and musical minder.
Harrington was the drummer with The Selector and The Specials,
and experienced in all genres of music, with a physical disposition
conducive to an authoritarian figure. These qualities combined make
for a formidable force to be reckoned with. However, the group remained
so physically challenging that the usual Hybrid:arts training practice
had to be improvised upon. One of the first initiatives was to walk
the young men up to their home territory in Lillington and document
their thoughts, aspirations and ideals on film, with Harrington encouraging
the young men to speak their minds through an informal interviewing
technique. One of the discussions we had revolved around who their
male role models were. Alarmingly, they were all older young men
in prison. It was at this point that what we were dealing with really
hit home.
On their return to the studio we laid emergency ground rules. These
rules included only having cigarette breaks once an hour, every member
of the team saying good morning when they came in, hoods and coats
taken off on arrival, and eating sandwiches sitting at a table. During
the period from November to January positive changes in their behaviour
appeared, which gave us the conviction that there could be progress.
They wanted the access to our state of the arts studio to express
themselves creatively and in order to gain this access they had to
listen and respond.
In the second week, with the young men attending on Thursday and
Fridays, the police contacted us to ask us if we were okay with having
the young men attending, having followed them from Lillington to
our studio the young men had been seen drinking at 9.30am, the police
offered us their assistance. We assured them that although the group
were stretching us, we were coping. It was at this point that the
police informed us that 8 out of 10 of the group were on bail for
a series of offences, including intent to cause bodily harm and assault.
This brought home to us the need that these young people had for
our service, to give them some focus and goals, as opposed to what
they told us they did before Hybrid:arts – hanging around on
the streets all day, looking for trouble as there was nothing else
for them to do.
A valuable communication with the police has continued. It
began as a weekly catch up of who was in trouble and which offences
were being brought to court. Four months into the project, the feedback
we’re receiving is that there is a positive feeling on the
streets of Lillington (where the community now go shopping without
feeling threatened and the streets are safer. The young men themselves
have ceased to acquire any additional bail offences since November
when they started our programme. Communication with the youth worker
and her inside knowledge of the young men and their family lives,
has been important in the overall understanding of the men’s
situation, and has therefore aided us in dealing more appropriately
with them as individuals. The support Hybrid:arts has given has sometimes
extended to the parents. There are occasions when younger siblings
attend with their brothers, due to teacher training days at the local
primary schools.
In the fourth week of training, the Deputy Head of North Leamington
School contacted Hybrid:arts to express her relief and gratitude
for a positive destination for Terry Hurlihy, and it was only then
that it transpired that Terry had not been completely truthful about
his age when he referred himself onto the programme. He is in yr
11. Hybrid:arts took the approach that Terry was demonstrating entrepreneurial
skills and the Deputy Head confirmed that he had outgrown school,
he has not attended school consistently since year 9. Through negotiation
to keep Terry on the course, the school agreed to release a proportion
of funding to secure Terry a place, as he could not be funded through
the franchise. This is first instance Hybrid:arts have had of schools
releasing funds for an individual excluded pupil for external vocational
provision. If Terry, and for that matter the rest of the group, had
not enrolled at Hybrid:arts it is most likely that a number of Anti
Social Behaviour Orders would have been handed out to a number of
the group.
Due to the attention that Hybrid:arts received for improving the
community safety on Thursdays and Fridays in Lillington by giving
the young men something to engage in and reducing crime, a series
of statutory agencies including drugs and alcohol teams, police and
health officers, have subsequently commissioned Hybrid:arts to create
the Social Reality Project. This project involves the young men from
Lillington filming and interviewing other young yobs across Warwickshire,
to create a series of products to teach young people awareness about
staying safe and healthy.
Over the first 3 months, Hybrid:arts were challenged to be flexible
enough to respond to these young men’s needs whilst also implementing
their training programme. In turn, the young men were challenged,
as their narrow lives in Lillington hadn’t equipped them for
creative thinking and adopting a positive attitude towards education.
Early on in the relationship, snippets of LYC graffiti appeared
in the studio, and it soon became apparent that this stood for ‘Lillington
Yob Culture’. We saw this as an opening with creative potential,
so we challenged them to compete with one another to devise a more
creative word than ‘yob’. It was after this that a discussion
around the social perceptions of the word yob ensued, where
the young men were fascinated to learn that yob derives from
Victorian usage and is in fact boy spelt backwards.
Following an increasing occurrence of these impromptu discussions
and debates, the group became adapt and effective in giving presentations
of the studio, the software and music production and graphic work
that they’d done, to visitors to the studio. They talk honestly
and directly about their past experiences, aims and ambitions what
they wanted to get out of their experience at Hybrid:arts into the
future. The wide range of visitors, attending our Leamington studio
have been given guided tours by the young men, increasing the young
peoples self esteem.
So why are we telling this story, you may ask?! Hybrid:arts strongly
believe that it is vital to the local and wider communities that
such a positive story is told – turning on it’s head
the stereotypical image held by society, and encouraged by sensationalist
and biased news stories, that some young people, particularly young
males, are destructive yobs that cannot be reached out to. Creative
training has the potential to truly engage young disaffected youths
in a way that mainstream education may fail, encouraging trainees
to think creatively, act thoughtfully and responsibly and make a
positive contribution to society delivering the respect agenda. Hybrid:arts
recognise the fact that young people first need to gain respect for
themselves before they can apply this to their wider surroundings,
and so we deliver confidence boosting learning.
Our experiences are proof that young people, including young offenders,
can be turned around. We hope the police are as excited as us about
what we are achieving. We know that the local community recognise
the benefits.
Now we can’t get rid of them! They come in every day to make
progress with their work, of their own free will, in addition to
the two days they are enrolled to work. We have recently also seen
an increased maturity in lyric writing within the group, tackling
issues such as teenage pregnancy and drug abuse and the consequences.
As a reward for this positive improvement we brought in a group of
break-dancers for a session with the young men. The response was
overwhelming, with a number of the group now very interested in learning
more about dancing, and asking to have practice sessions in our storeroom – who
would’ve thought that such an aggressive group of young men
have reacted so positively to dancing!
Time will tell if this beginning can be developed and whether it
can be applied to other young people in other situations. We are
always conscious of the fact that this is a team effort with the
other agencies involved it has been an example of partnership working
at its best.
Hybrid:arts recognise that these young men now have a role to play
in acting as peer mentors to introduce other young people from Lillington
and other areas to the training opportunities available in our studio.
It would not be out of the question to hope that, funding forthcoming,
that a couple of them could end up working for Hybrid:arts in the
future Gemma
Corden - Hybrid:arts researcher writer- 2006
Appendix: Social Reality - a training film
This is a working title, aimed to bear a resemblance to reality
TV in its style, and therefore engaging across all groups. This style
of film has the potential to be humorous, serious, stimulating, sad
and uplifting all at the same time…but most of all it will
be an advocacy too that will demonstrate that young people are capable
of demonstrating mature and responsible behaviour and recognising
what community safety means.
This project would deliver a countywide community safety treatment
engaging young people identified as at risk. The young people would
be trained in video and music production, and would document themselves
and their peers, discussing and understanding the consequences of
abusing alcohol and drugs. By exploring the issues of keeping safe
the young people would tackle areas for concern, drinks spiking,
teenage pregnancy, and the consequences of breaking the law.
There are ambitious hard and soft outcomes attached to the project;
- Reduction of teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases
- Reduction of drug and alcohol misuse
- Reduction in violent crime
- Reduction in fear of violent crime
It is understood that this project needs to get to the heart of
the deprived areas in Warwickshire and identify a combination of
awareness raising and shock tactics to enable young people to understand
the consequences of their anti social behaviour and inform parents
of the role that they play in being able to curb antisocial behaviour.
The project will to deliver core training in film and audio production.
Following the training, the teams of young people will go into
their communities, young offenders units, prisons, hospitals, police
stations and youth settings to document the views of young people
around the key themes surrounding the safety of young people: sex,
alcohol and drugs. The purpose of this documentary footage will be
multi fold.
- Young people will be presented in a non-threatening way demonstrating
mature and responsible attitudes towards community safety. They
will have the opportunity to interview councillors, officers and
other young people about how they are viewed by society, and what
can be done to change this.
- Young people will demonstrate the dire consequences of not behaving
responsibly and create a film that can be used in Schools, Youth
settings, at national conferences and be shown to members and statutory
agencies.
- Throughout the process young people who are capable of acting
as ambassadors to present the film will be identified. These young
people may have experienced the negative side of community safety
and have since reformed themselves. These ambassadors will accompany
the film and give presentations as it is shown in various settings.
The sub products; DVD-comic book-website production will create
tools that can be widely distributed. By being created and managed
by young people the messages will appeal to the target audience,
look funky whilst carrying a serious message.`
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