an arts club and research project with foster carers and their children
Have a Go is our new arts & culture club for looked after children aged 7-11yrs and their foster carers. It took place in Barrow, Maryport and Whitehaven summer 2012. Our team of artists, foster carers and young people worked together exploring all sorts of arts activities from filmmaking to music, poetry and songwriting.
The final celebration event take place in Maryport at The Wave last November.
We have been delighted to have participated in this national research project into the effects of participating in a cultural activity for looked after children and their foster carers. It has been supported by the National Children's Bureau and Creativity Culture England. Our project co-ordinator Ann has also been working with evaluators OPM on developing a Theory of Change model especially for this programme.
On Saturday 7 July we had our second full day Have a Go! session in Maryport. We started the day with a good game of Stand up if... and some call and response songs. A group went with our top film maker Tom and made some great animations. We had a brilliant group sing and then we went into smaller groups to sing, play and compose new songs. We all got together at around 3pm to share what we had been doing. There were some fantastic garageband tracks, some beautiful singing with Pete on guitar. I was glad the girls had moved away from the backing track and started to sing with Pete on guitar, we could hear their voices much better. We were treated to an Acapella song too. The films made were excellent. We saw The Maryport news, a scooter film and brilliant animations. It was a fabulous day and everyone seemed a lot more confident and relaxed.
Have a Go! session 3 (Maryport)
It was brilliant to be back together for another full day. We started the session with drama games and call and response songs including: The button factory, zip zap boing, this is a tick this is a tock and Let’s all be. Then a group went with Tom to create some films and animations while others stayed with Pete and Keith to sing and create new songs. There were lots of songs to hear and films to watch in the afternoon sharing and the work created was wonderful. We could see the time and care the young people had taken to present work to others and also to ensure they were expressing something about themselves. We were also treated to some brilliant dancing and choreography. Everyone is looking forward to the nest session.
