Our time at East Summer School!

 

Written by Ajay Pabial

This summer we were approached with an exciting opportunity to deliver a series of workshops as part of the East Summer School at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park!

Summer School courses were open to young people across the four host boroughs Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets or Waltham Forest. Over the weeks courses were delivered by world-leading organisations, such as the BBC, UAL’s London College of Fashion, University College London and Studio Wayne McGregor who will be moving to Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park as part of East Bank. Other partners include Idverde, Art Clubbers,  Jess and Morgs, Class Of Your Own, The Yard Theatre, The Landscape Institute , People Speak, British Council, Staffordshire University London, Badu Sports and Catalyst in Communities. The Summer School is supported by the London Legacy Development Corporation,  Foundation for FutureLondon & City of London.

As part of the Summer School we delivered our CREATIVITY, CULTURE AND COMMUNITY workshops package which is perfect for those who wish to make their first steps into the world of community arts and creative engagement. Become a start-up in our ever growing Creative Sector which as of 2017 accounts

for 1 in 10 jobs across the UK and employ 700,000 more people than the financial services!

Myself and Facilitator Ayumi Konno delivered 6 powerful workshops to explore and push the creative boundaries of the young people;

  • The Art of Communication

  • Own the Hustle

  • Become a PM Superhero

  • Creative Creative Companies

  • CV 101

  • Decoding Job Descriptions

It was an exciting opportunity to bring our workshops to a virtual platform. As many participatory arts organisations, delivery of our work, projects and programmes is something we are experimenting with to find a format that works for us in this new normal. We were supported by the wonderful Senior Communities and Business Manager Layla Conway and the ever so fabulous Summer School Officer Tasnim Amin!

Tasnim was amazing by providing all the partners and introduction to a new online platform called Padlet. Padlet is a free online tool that is best described as an online notice board. Padlet can be used by students and teachers to post notes on a common page. The notes posted by teachers and students can contain links, videos, images and document files. The tool was super helpful in getting any pre-work to the young people and providing key information to fully understand what they can expect from the sessions, furthermore the tool allowed us to follow up with more content and resources and even engage with the young people too to find out how the workshops went.

We had just under 200 young people register to join our workshops and honestly I was thankful that we had been able to generate so much interest! We met some truly talented and inspiring young people through our workshops who have gone on to work with us to deliver youth-led consultations for the Fusion Prize! I truly believe we made a difference by supporting those young people to think about their creative careers in a whole new light and even provided them the skills they need to push them to the next level!

Remember, Creative's are a growing force of nature, it's now your turn to make a difference!

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If you want to find out more about our work or want to collaborate, feel free to drop me a line at ajay.pabial@artclubbers.com and let's arrange a virtual coffee!

 
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