The National Youth Agency: My Place

In this series we look at a range of generic and specialist youth facilities to encourage ambition and vision in support of Myplace bids, linking each to one of the programme's ten key principles.

CREATE STUDIOS AND FLUX, SWINDON

Key principle: Community cohesion - providing opportunities for young people to build relationships with others from different backgrounds and encouraging and improving intergenerational relationships.

Create has run outreach arts activities with young people for the past 10 years. Flux is a three-year action research project which is exploring the effects of providing positive arts activities for young people in preventing disaffection and social exclusion. It is based at a local school and uses a vehicle fitted out as a digital studio. Both are managed by Mobile Media. Create delivers a range of media activities with young people in school and community settings throughout the borough - some 9,000 young people have learnt how to make films, create animations and get involved in other digital technologies. Flux's programme covers a range of art forms including music, dance, visual arts and circus skills, working in close partnership with other local arts and youth organisations. Eighty nine projects have taken place in schools, youth centres, libraries, shopping centres and in the mobile studio. Training events with four groups of young people - young women, young offenders, refugees and asylum seekers, and disabled young people - on the theme of "Our Town" have also been run.