Send Project Weblog

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Arts Awards Highlights

The following videos show highlights from the Bronze Arts Award delivered by SEND at Markfield Community Centre in Leicestershire through the winter of 2007. The programme was a resounding success with many attendees progressing in their chosen arts activities.

Arts Award Highlights Part 1

Arts Award Highlights Part 2

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Limehurst High School Case Study

SEND have delivered four successful projects for Limehurst High School, Loughborough. The themes have included Cultural Transition, celebrating individuality and identity.

The one day programs were aimed at a mixed range of abilities, with students enrolled onto them for different reasons. The cultural transition project was used to help a group of Bengali males make the step up to high school. This received a great response from everyone involved.

Similarly, the Individuality project was designed for a group of well performing students with varied ‘quirkiness’. This made for an interesting project with excellent results.

The success of the four workshop days has led to Limehurst developing a Music and Media suite at the school.

Limehurst Urban Arts Performance and Workshops

Limehurst Cultural Transition Project

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Reference From Emma Southern, Leicestershire Youth Offending Team

To whom it may concern,

I am writing with regard to the SEND project based in Nottingham. Lee Marriott and Moon Chester attended the Arts Council Arts Award training event in Leicestershire as part of the Youth Offending team.

All providers sub-contracted by Leicestershire Youth Offending service are subject to enhanced disclosure every 3 years. Copies of these CRB forms are seen as part of our health and safety policy.

SEND have worked with our team on a combination of projects with young offenders over the last three years. The company was selected due to their previous qualifications and experience working with disengaged learners.

The company have proved instrumental in developing a music technology curriculum within our project. We have piloted PLUS materials, differing software and a combination of schemes of work covering different guided learning hours.

The quality of materials produced, student portfolios and learner knowledge has been remarkable considering the NEET students our project has to work with.

We have had excellent retention rates for all of their programmes and the learner feedback has always been extremely favourable.

We will be working with SEND on the Bronze arts award over the next 2 years and hope we can accredit learners for all of their arts achievements.

Should you require any additional information, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Yours faithfully,

Emma Southern.

Head of Leicestershire Youth Offending Team

PLUS Leicester Youth Offending Team Summer School

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Lauren Jones – Case Study

We first met Lauren whilst working with Leicestershire Youth Offending Team during the summer of 2006. The purpose of the project was to teach the importance of consequences to the young offenders. Our involvement was to deliver music and lyrical workshops. The young people were encouraged to write lyrics to their music, based on their experiences and including things they had learnt and understood about the importance of consequence.

Our first impression of Lauren was that she was very quiet, quite reserved and lacked in confidence. She was unsure of what she was going to do with her life career wise, and came across very indecisive.

During the music workshop she was slow to get into it. Her music taste was different to the majority of the group and she was reluctant to share her taste for guitar-based music with the group. We explained that the software we use can be applied to all varieties of music, and began writing a guitar-based track with her. This caught her interest and she began asking questions about the technology, what you could do with it and the careers that go with it. This led to a discussion about careers in the music industry and we suggested she enrolled herself onto a full time course at Confetti studios.

She is now undertaking the BTEC First Diploma in Music Technology at Confetti, after being taken off the Introduction to Music Technology as her ability level was deemed too high for it.

We met with Lauren recently and she told us that she is really enjoying her time at Confetti. She hasn’t found the work there too difficult, and enjoys the challenges she is faced with. She prefers the working environment as everyone there is dedicated to a passion for music and this makes it easier to learn.

Through her learning she has met more people interested in music, and music production. This has led to her collaborating with people at the college and forming a band. Her first love is heavy metal, but by collaborating she is opening her ears to fresh sounds and genres. She explained that it was SEND who first introduced her to different sounds and styles, most notably the political South American Hip-hop of Immortal Technique. She told us that his lyrics made her think about and re-assess her life.

Lauren now has her eyes set on the future, and it is clear that she wants to focus much of her energy on her band. She is also very aware of the cutthroat nature of the music business and she understands how important her education is to have something to fall back on. She hopes to be able to make a living from studio work should her band not take off.

She feels that without music she would “ be out getting wrecked all the time.”

She feels the YOT should do more creative workshops like the one we deliver, because it opens up new opportunities that the young people attending may not have heard of, or given a thought before.