Coventry UK City of Culture 2021

Barriers to Bridges (Trauma informed) Artist in

Residency Brief

Extended Learning Centres

About Coventry City of Culture Trust:

We are a diverse, modern city which is re-imagining the role culture can play in bringing people together. Coventry is a city of welcome, a city of activists and pioneers, a city of peace and reconciliation, a city of innovation and invention, a City of Culture.

The Trust is committed to:

• Welcoming 2.5m additional visitors to Coventry in 2021/22• 80% of the city’s residents experiencing at least three events in 2021/22• Increasing audience attendance from under-represented communities by 20%• Activating more than 16,000 volunteers and participants• Making long-lasting, tangible social change in Coventry• Transforming who holds the power to create and curate in the city• Starting a wave of cultural investment across the region

In July 2020, we announced that Coventry’s City of Culture programme will start in May 2021 and run for 12 months, allowing us to keep our promise to the city and region - to deliver an extraordinary year while providing some much-needed certainty and resources to our artists and communities. This is your opportunity to be part of telling the story of the city that moves.

About ELC:

Coventry ELC is a Pupil Referral Unit for Key Stage 3 & 4 pupils who have struggled to access mainstream school education due to Social, Emotional & Mental Health (SEMH) issues.

The core purpose of the ELC is ‘Enhancing Futures’ - maximising the potential of all our students. We seek to identify and meet our students’ needs to enable us to reintegrate them into mainstream school or into special educational settings or to support them to successfully complete Year 11 with us.

Our students commonly arrive with negative views of education, of their own prospects and all too often of themselves. Our dedicated staff work tirelessly to re-engage young people, building trust and motivation to enable them to stretch themselves and achieve their potential.

About CVX Festival

CVX Festival is a pioneering three-day arts activism festival curated by young people in the city around the themes of community, unity and social change. CVX will bring together local, regional and national artists using their platform as role models to stand up for young people.

Introduction

Coventry is currently facing high rates of serious youth violence and there are some young people who may be vulnerable to criminal exploitation. We are coming together to find an artist who can understand the lived experience of the children and young people in the city who may need to find their voice.

Matthew Stiles, Head of Alternative Provision for Coventry, explains, “Our students commonly arrive with negative views of education, of their own prospects and all too often of themselves.” We’re looking for an artist who understands trauma informed practice and can creatively investigate how arts and culture can empower young people who attend extended learning centres across the city. With the young people, you will explore safety, choice, collaboration, trustworthiness and empowerment in order to build positive relationships within themselves, their communities and their city.

We’re especially interested in exploring how young people can use arts, culture and creativity to find and use their voice, and explore trust, identity and self-care through music or visual art in order to build positive relationships within themselves and their community.

Your role is to work within the extended learning centres across Wyken, The Link and Swanswell to creatively respond to the provocations below in order to develop content for CVX Festival and to help the students create work in line with trauma informed practice.

Provocation

1. How can arts, culture and creativity empower young people to transform relationships between themselves and their community based on compassion, empathy, self-care and safety in order to reduce conflict and promote peace, unity and community?

2. How can arts, culture and creativity stimulate and facilitate self-reflection, self-expression and communication for young people with each other and the wider community? 

3. How can young people become empowered to challenge, reflect and then express themselves, those around them and their environment? 

The residency will include:

Research

● In-house research and development across 3x Extended Learning Centres ● Workshops with young people aged 12 – 16 exploring expression, empathy, trust and

self-care where you will be expected to work with young people to develop content in response to the themes, to include young people creating content and making their own final piece.

● Opportunities to share and get feedback on your work

Development

12 Weeks of creative development from week one to develop your final performance separate to the content developed by young people

Once your R&D period is complete you will have a further 4 weeks to develop a final 30minute - 1 hour sharing which will be presented at CVX Festival

Sharing

● The content that you produce with the young people at the ELCs will be presented via a showcase organised with the Extended Learning Centre.

● Your final piece will be presented at CVX Festival.

After your sharing you will develop:

1x Workshop for the ELCs based on your findings and your final sharing in order to address the provocation based on trauma informed creative practice.

Applications

We encourage applications from individuals with lived experiences or knowledge surrounding: why young people can develop negative views of themselves, what this can lead to, what can help to address this, and how vulnerable young people can be targeted by gangs and criminal exploitation. Arts organisations and companies may also apply for this commission.

We are inviting applications from:

Spoken word artists / lyricists Theatre Makers Visual artists Film makers / Documentarians Musicians Mixed medium performance artists

living or working in Coventry and Warwickshire (CV postcode) and the West Midlands, with experiences of facilitation, and with experience of working with at risk young people; for example this might have been at youth centres, with youth offenders, or PRUs/ELCs (pupil referral unit or extended learning centres).

Requirements

A valid, enhanced DBS within 12 months (Please note that a further DBS check may be requested upon appointment)

To apply:

All applicants along with any other artists or partners must carry Public Liability Insurance. If you do not have this, you can get cover via a membership here: https://www.a-n.co.uk/join/

If you have an up-to-date DBS, please submit a copy on application.

The fee is £8000 based on the artist/arts organisation being responsible for own tax and NI on a freelance basis. This fee includes:

- Workshop Materials- Management, admin and travel- Individual planning with the Extended Learning Centres and wider partners - End-of-programme evaluation session

How to apply

Please submit either a written (no more than 1000 words) or video (no more than 5 minutes) response on how you will approach the provocations stated, and an idea for the 30 minute – 1 hour final piece that you intend to develop.

Please address the following in your application:

- Provide an outline of your approach to the commission and your proposal of how you would deliver.

- Your ideas for the creative content of the workshops with young people (and how you might use a creative stimulus to encourage sharing and engagement) and for the sharing event.

- How you will use your artistic skills to engage vulnerable young people, and an example of CPD (Continued Professional Development) workshop for the ELCs that you will prepare.

- A rough outline of your final sharing, to include:

o How you will use your workshops to support young people to create content for CVX Festival

o Ideas for the piece you may present at CVX Festival o How you will use your final piece to showcase the impact arts, culture and

creativity has had on the young people, and their journey of development. o How your final performance will share your learning in response to the provocation

questions.- What is your experience of working with vulnerable young people?- Why are you suitable for this residency?- Your approach if sections of the programme need to be delivered online due to Covid

restrictions.- Please also include:

- Two Referees- A draft budget of how you propose to allocate the commission to cover all aspects

of delivery.- If you are an individual artist, please provide an up-to-date CV and a portfolio of

your work - If you are an artist intending to work with a freelancer, please provide and up to

date CV - If you are an organisation, please state your approach to the work, evidence of

successful projects and learnings alongside your values.

If you are successful in your initial application you will be invited to an online interview. This will last approximately an hour and will comprise of a series of relevant questions, but you will also be required to deliver a 15 minute online creative exercise with the interview panel on theme of ‘Why young people may feel unsafe in the city’. You will need to ensure that this exercise is accessible to a variety of people who have varying levels of artistic skill and may have limited or no experience of a cultural workshop.

Timeline:

W/c 1st March – Applications to go live

22nd March, 5pm – Applications close

W/c 29th March - Interviews for successful applicants

W/c 5th April – Feedback via phone calls and appointment of artist.

Phase 1:

R&D Workshops at the Extended Learning Centres

W/c 19th April – 26th May: Inductions, R&D.

Reflection week

W/c 10/05/21

You will be expected to submit your ideas for your piece based on your findings from Phase 1.

R&D Workshops at the Extended Learning Centres

W/c W/c 17/05/21 - W/c 21/06/21

W/c 14th W/c 21/05/21 - W/c 28/05/28

Sharing Week

W/c 21st June – 2nd August (Final Piece)

You will be expected to have finalised for your piece and ready to share your work for CVX Festival.

W/c 5th August - CVX Festival

W/c 1st September - 1x CPD workshop

W/c 9th September - Evaluation

You have some flexibility in terms of which days each week you chose to engage over the delivery schedule. You will be expected to liaise with the Extended Learning Centre and City of Culture following your appointment but ahead of commencement date in order to arrange which dates you wish to spend with them for your R&D phase.

Most R&D activities will take place across the Extended Learning Centres, but it will involve travel to different sites in Coventry. You will be expected to travel independently to relevant sites.

All activities will be delivered in a Covid compliant environment and may be subject to change due to the changing landscape and updates to Covid legislation.

Wellbeing offer:

Safety and wellbeing of the artist is first and foremost. Any activity will be subject to scrutiny and risk assessment, with wellbeing considerations at the forefront.

The artist will be given access to wellbeing support should it be required, and there will be a contact for wellbeing check ins if required.

End