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Staff from the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden make creativity educational for young people.
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Taking youth culture higher
Lisa Salmon6/ 5/2008
FOR most parents, the phrase `youth culture' means teenagers standing on street corners drinking from a bottle of cider.
But some believe that if young people were introduced to real culture in the form of the arts, museums, galleries and theatres, such time-wasting pursuits might take a back seat. Certainly, introducing a different, more positive form of culture to the nation's youth has attracted top support, including from the Prince of Wales.
The Prince has launched his own Foundation for Children and the Arts, and says: "The arts have a vital role to play in helping young people develop their full potential as human beings and as part of our society. To do this children really do need to feel that the arts are something they can access."
And the government is trying to address the accessibility problem by ensuring that every school pupil has `at least five hours of high-quality culture per week', with a particular focus on `those who would otherwise miss out'.
As part of the Creative Partnerships initiative, children in 10 pilot scheme areas will get the chance to attend top quality theatre and dance performances, exhibitions, galleries, museums and heritage sites. It's all about making creativity seem more fun to children, says Richard Darlington, a spokesman for Creative Partnerships.
The scheme aims to instruct teachers and people from creative professions, ranging from staff at the Royal Opera House to a DJs collective, how to make creativity both educational and attractive to young people.
Attitude
"You won't change any child's attitude to the arts and culture in just an afternoon - it needs to be a structured, ongoing programme," he says.
"We're trying to give children the life skills they need. Modern employers are asking for more than just qualifications - they want competent communicators, for example, and the theatre teaches that incredibly well."
He says that as well as helping children develop life skills, encouraging them to experience different cultural activities can be good for parents too.
"Parents can find some academic work difficult themselves, but the arts and culture is, like sport, much easier for them to get involved in.
"I think it's important that the government doesn't try to force particular art forms or culture on children. But if they don't have the opportunity to try it when they're a child then they go into adult life thinking that certain art forms are off the table.
"What we want to do is make children confident consumers of culture so they can make choices about what they like based on having had an experience of it."
Family-friendly
He says increasing numbers of museums and galleries are becoming more family-friendly, with interactive zones for children and so on. If they can see and feel and touch, you often get a much more positive interaction than if kids just look," he stresses.
Part of the improvement in family-friendly culture may be down to the charity Kids in Museums, which aims to ensure that all families are welcomed in Britain's museums and galleries. They recently worked with The Guardian on the Family Friendly Museum Award, the winner of which has just been announced as the Weston Park Museum in Sheffield.
The charity was founded by writer Dea Birkett, who hopes increasing numbers of family-friendly cultural attractions will prompt more youngsters to visit.
But she points out that often it's not the parents who have to persuade children to try a spot of culture, but vice-versa. She says: "Research is showing that in some families, particularly the disadvantaged ones, the only person who will have been to a museum is a child with a school visit.
"Often they'll have had such a great time that they come back and say to their parents they should go too.
"So one of our aims is that such school visits become an invitation to the whole family to visit museums and galleries."
She says that what kids get out of such visits is `the thrill of the real', stressing: "There's nothing like putting your hands on a rock that's hundreds of millions of years old. Kids love the fact that what they're seeing and feeling is real - that feeling is unbeatable."
To find local family-friendly museums and galleries go to the Culture24 children's zone at show.me.uk
kidsinmuseums.org.uk
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5/06/2008 at 16:59
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