Partnership for Urban South Hampshire (PUSH)
PUSH 4 Culture - serving specific areas in Hampshire, Portsmouth and Southampton
The Partnership will be led by Hampshire County Council, with Southampton City Council, Portsmouth City Council and Creative Partnerships and endorsed by the PUSH Quality Places Task Group. The area is home to a wide range of Cultural Organisations – arts, museums, library and archive services – all of which will be involved. Business, Community, Further/Higher Education and Schools all signalled their willingness to participate.
Our Location and Context
PUSH is a city-region partnership. It is recognised by Government as a major new economic growth area. It is a key strategic priority that local people are at the heart of this economic renaissance. Emphasis is being placed on raising educational attainment and creating an employable generation. Identified areas of need have the following profile;
- Areas of current low educational attainment and poor schools attendance
- Areas of high social deprivation and social tension
- Low current cultural activity –e.g. perception, awareness, isolation
- Access problems –eg: low income and rural isolation.
Our Motivation
is to create a pilot which will develop models that encourage young people to choose to continue their engagement in activity beyond the school gates, which
- Evaluates the importance of culture in creating an employable generation
- Facilitates full youth engagement in internationally important maritime/cultural anniversaries in 2012 in addition to the Cultural Olympiad
- Places young people at the heart of the planning and delivery of the project
- Energises the emerging cultural and community partnerships within the PUSH region.
- Explores the feasibility of creating a sub-regional Youth Production Company,
- Identifies how best to balance the need to provide locally specific delivery with the efficiencies that can be gained from looking at synergies across the sub-region
Young People
will be at the heart of this project assisting in the planning and delivery of activities. In each neighbourhood through a range of youth panels young people will set the project parameters and ensure that project programming directly meets their needs.
The Programme
will focus on providing access to an additional 3 hours per week activity beyond the curriculum, that grows out of and complements core entitlement. Local needs will be catered for but where the management team identifies common need across the region, then wider and larger programmes can be developed increasing value for money and economies of scale. Provision of clear progression routes for the participants will be key to the success. We are proposing to adopt the following approach: Awareness raising and inclusion, promoting the range of offers available; Engagement, the delivery of a range of bespoke opportunities for young people (and their families) in their area; and Thinking about a career, providing a range of activity for advanced participation.
Outcomes
from pilot should provide enhanced opportunities for approximately 30,000 young people to participate. Specifically we will measure:
- Increased number of Young People participating outside of the school gates;
- Increased enthusiasm for cultural learning and increased interest in creative vocations
- Success of the youth advisory panels
- Contribution to raising whole school, pupil group and individual level achievements
- Reduced youth crime rates in post-school period.