Create Rochdale’s Skill Share programme takes place-based approach to creative youth work
Rochdale’s Local Cultural Education Partnership, Create Rochdale is nurturing a community of youth workers and creative practitioners who are collaborating to embed creativity and culture in youth work.
Throughout 2024, Create Rochdale delivered a yearlong professional development programme for five youth workers and five creative practitioners who all live or work in Rochdale. The group met once a month to learn about each other’s practice and explore how they could work together for the benefit of young people in their local area.
The idea for the programme developed from conversations within meetings about barriers to cultural education for young people. Professionals from different organisations recognised that their own ways of working, experience and skills sometimes created barriers.
Helen Thackray, Creative Partnerships Manager at Your Trust said: “Many brilliant creative practitioners find working with young people daunting, particularly when it is in a youth work setting – youth centres don’t have the same structures as a school or the familiarity of a cultural venue. Likewise, many youth workers don’t have any experience in commissioning and working with professional artists. These observations are not unique to Rochdale and the barriers to collaboration are often much deeper and broader than individuals’ own confidence and experience. Organisational practice, funding processes and systemic inequalities can also prevent cross-sector partnerships working in many places.“
In response to this long term challenge, Helen and Diane Higgins, Senior Youth Officer at Rochdale Borough Council, worked together to develop the Skill Share programme which was funded by the Cultural Development Fund (a Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) fund administered by Arts Council England) and by Greater Manchester Arts, funded by the GMCA Spirit Programme. The programme also took inspiration from the ‘Creative Youth Work – Increasing inclusivity and relevance for young people accessing cultural provision’ report led by Spotlight and the Circuit programme led by Tate between 2013 – 2017.
The sessions took place in youth centres and cultural venues and included presentations, practical creative workshops and discussions facilitated by Liz Postlethwaite. At the start, they explored the fundamentals such as ‘What is youth work?’ and ‘What is an artist’s practice?’ before digging deeper into the Venn diagram of youth work and the arts. As the programme developed, it became peer led, with the group choosing what they wanted to discuss and learn. They also started organising their own activities and collaborations outside of the programme. Over the summer holidays they worked together to deliver a range of creative activities for young people. For some of the creative practitioners, this was their first time working in a youth setting and for others it provided opportunities to try new activities and approaches.
Alapelode Oluwatobi, also known as Micah Stalgic, Freelance Creative Practitioner said: “Attending the Skill Share Programme equipped me with the knowledge and practical safeguarding tools needed to work with young people. The best part of the training session was the hands-on experience, where artists delivered workshops to young people. This allowed us to apply what we had learned about youth work in a real setting.”
The youth workers began thinking about how they could nurture young people’s creativity by embedding creative activities into their day-to-day youth work. For example, youth worker Jackie McCulloch, took inspiration from an artist’s talk on sculpture and supported young people to create sculptures and cyanotype prints on a beach during a residential trip to Anglesey.
Youth worker Uzma Firdos said: “As a youth worker I feel the programme offered me a great opportunity to reflect on my practice and feel more confident in exploring art in a different context as opposed to the restricted view I had of what art involves.”
The impact of the programme was evident at the ‘Art of Youth Work’ event delivered in Rochdale in October 2024 to celebrate National Youth Work Week. Diane opened the with a speech highlighting the services’ awareness of the value and importance of creativity and the arts within youth work.
Diane said: “We want every young person that we work with to have the opportunity to explore their creativity and experience arts and culture. Programmes like this create a deep and sustainable shift in the way we work and bring us closer to that vision.”
At the end of the programme, the creative practitioners and youth workers spoke to each other about reflections and learning from the Skill Share. Highlights from their conversations are now available to read online in the document below.
You can also get a taste of the success of the programme from this short film:
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