PLAY PROJECT MAKES USE OF THE COASTLINE
Play Ranger Project
Crosby Coastal Park, Sefton
"I really enjoy the crabbing," says Ben, a 13-year-old from Sefton who is a regular and a junior play ranger at Crosby Coastal Park. Local parent Sharon Cunningham agrees: "The children are really made up by it, they really like crabbing."
Collecting crabs is just one of the activities that Jayne Foat, the park's lone play ranger, is using to reconnect children aged eight to 13 with Sefton's coastline. "The best times for me personally as a child were when playing outdoors, so it's a passion of mine to encourage children to play outside," she says. "It's about getting them interested in the outdoors and messy play rather than just playing on the PlayStation. The parents love it. They talk about how it's bringing that type of play back for their own children."
The focus is thus on firing children's imaginations, which Foat tries to help along by providing low-cost equipment to play with. "I try to help enhance things," Foat explains. "For example, they might make mud birthday cakes and I'll get some hundreds and thousands to sprinkle on them or provide muffin tins and wooden spoons they can use. I also supply washing-up bowls and string for crabbing."
Foat spends three afternoons a week and two weekends a month at the play area, which was built using lottery cash and is close to the Crosby Lakeside Adventure Centre. Her salary and the equipment costs are covered by the same grant.
"I'm paid £18,000 a year and then there's equipment costs - mainly water, soil, sand, play equipment and a trolley for moving equipment from my van to the play area," she says. "Things do get misplaced due to the poor visibility and if people walking past find a football with no-one around they might take it with them. That's just the nature of open access though and the cost of replacing equipment is taken into account. I use charity shops, so it doesn't cost a lot."
There's also the challenge of the weather. "Last night it was wet and windy – awful – but we had around 20 children there until the weather got really bad," she says. "But in the summer holidays, there's children there all day - on the best days as many as 80 or 90."
Foat would like to do more forest school-type activities at the play area but as a lone worker it has proved impractical so far, and the main question now is the project's survival. "The funding from the lottery runs out on 31 July," she says. "I know its future is being looked at and I don't know how that will work out – positively or negatively."
CHILDREN'S CENTRE OPENS UP TO COMMUNITY
The Priory Centre
Great Yarmouth
The Priory Centre in Great Yarmouth has taken the decision to open up a space created specifically for children to the wider community. The Priory started life as one of the original Sure Start centres, before being spun out to create the Great Yarmouth Community Trust in 2001.
While the trust's two children's centres – one in the north, one in the south of Great Yarmouth - remain at the core of its work, the doors have been flung open to adults too. "We've got people coming in and out of the building throughout the day," says Karen Harvey, children's centre manager at the trust. "It's become a real hub. Out of the Sure Start programme we work with the whole community."
So on Friday afternoons there are activities aimed at adults with learning disabilities. On Wednesdays there's a drop-in advice service for older people where Age Concern Great Yarmouth provides one-to-one support.
A cafe is open every weekday and there are adult training courses ranging from basic cooking and first aid through to digital photography and glass painting. The centre also offers a fitness and weight-loss course for those at risk of becoming overweight. All of it except the cafe is free, funded by a combination of lottery funding and other grants.
In fact, there are now more adults than children using the centre. "We have around 2,500 under-fives, and probably about 3,000 adults," says Harvey, who adds that the aim is to double the number of adults by 2015.
But while the trust has made the children's centre the nucleus of what is now a community-wide service, the integration of children and adults is limited. "I think that's the next thing," says Harvey. "We don't have the older people going into the nurseries and reading stories. That kind of thing is a great idea in theory, but you know how strict Ofsted are, so it would need to be managed quite tightly. You can't just have people wandering around – that's just not on."
MUSEUM STAGES YOUTH-LED EVENTS
Horniman Museum Youth Panel
Forest Hill, south east London
The Gallery Square in the Horniman Museum is nestled between permanent displays of musical instruments and anthropological treasures from across the world. But on Saturday 27 November last year, the studious atmosphere gave way to the brass-enhanced hip-soul grooves of local band Southpaw Saints and around 200 young people.
The party, Hyjacked, marked the end of a two-day youth conference organised by the museum's youth panel. Formed last year, the 40-member panel meets weekly and gets young people aged 14 to 19 to give a youth perspective on the museum's work. The panel then develops events that will appeal to their age group.
"The Horniman is good at reaching young children," says Kat Leung, youth engagement officer at the south London museum.
"But there's not many from the teens onwards. These events help make those young people know there are activities here for them too."
It's also a departure from the norm for the museum. "Hyjacked was quite a big event and something we'd never done before," says Leung. "Since the youth panel has been set up we've done quite a few unusual things."
Other events have included a youth takeover day and projects on urban identities and dress.
The panel is actually a product of Horniman's involvement in the Cultural Olympiad. It was initially put together as part of the Olympiad's Stories of the World initiative to involve people in curating museum collections. But when the project finished the young people didn't want it to end. "A lot of them wanted to continue working with the Horniman, so the panel was set up to help those young people and continue a relationship with them," says Leung.
Now the panel is funded with some of the money the Horniman gets from Renaissance in Regions, a programme run by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council.
LIBRARY SETS UP DEDICATED YOUTH CLUB
HeadSpace Efford
Plymouth
On hearing about the Reading Agency's HeadSpace initiative to support the creation of spaces for young people in libraries, Emma Sherriff headed to Efford in Plymouth. As outreach support officer for the city's library service, she wanted to hear what the young people who lived in the deprived suburb thought. "I went to the community college and spoke to them over the lunch break," she recalls. "An hour later, I had 50 signatures from young people supporting a HeadSpace at their library."
After further consultation and a successful funding bid, Efford Library got its own HeadSpace.
Sherriff says the goal is to make libraries "safe, welcoming and engaging". Since opening in January 2008, it has worked with 260 teenagers. Its popularity has forced its weekly sessions to be divided into two age groups: one for 11- to 12-year-olds and one for 13- to 19-year-olds. The younger age group runs during the library's normal opening hours and attracts up to 15 young people; the older age group sessions run after hours and attract up to 26 teenagers.
The library service now funds it and libraries in the Devonport and Plympton areas of the city are set to get their own HeadSpace.
Young people can come along and play on a Wii console, use the computers, or take part in a range of activities largely suggested by the young people themselves. "We plan ahead every three months and ask them for ideas to create a programme that reflects the whole group," says Sherriff.
Recent activities include BBQs, gardening, karaoke sessions and ballroom dancing. Sessions on circus skills and cooking are coming soon.
What unites them all is reading. "Everything they do we try to link back to the books and reading," says Sherriff.
"Even karaoke, where it's about getting them to read off the screen. Not all the young people find it easy to read. Some struggle to write a sentence at the age of 14 or 15."
The young people's tastes are also helping the library to identify stock that will appeal to teenagers, such as manga.
Abbie Cunningham, the 17-year-old who started the manga group, says the library is now more attractive to people her age: "Since we chose the manga, there's a lot more teenagers coming to the library."
Sherriff believes that using libraries and similar public spaces for youth work is a potential solution in a time of cutbacks. "We all need to work together to weather the storm and make sure groups are able to run activities that may traditionally not have been in libraries, galleries or wherever – just to ensure these projects survive because the work they do is fantastic."
