BLOG: ROB ELKINGTON – DIRECTOR, ARTS CONNECT 

It is a great pleasure to be involved as a co-lead of the Collaborate & Innovate (C&I) programme with our colleagues at The Mighty Creatives. We designed the programme with our commissioners, Arts Council England (Midlands) and have been running it since January 2023. It builds upon a decade of trailblazing work in the Midlands for children in care.

C&I is a learning, research and development programme set up to build the capacity of the cultural sector and Virtual Schools (VS), enabling them to work together.  It set out to answer the question of “How do we best engage care experienced children and young people with arts and culture?”  and add to the existing evidence base.

It ran in two phases. Twenty five arts and cultural organisation participated in intensive learning with online training about Trauma Informed Practice and how it can be used to underpin their work with children in care. This approach is at the heart of VS practice and it is vital that cultural partners can demonstrate their understanding of the needs of VSs and show how it informs what they do. The second phase involved eight of these cultural organisations being partnered with a VS for a 12 month action research partnership. These were Derbyshire VS & Junction Arts; Dudley VS & Voice Magazine; Leicestershire VS & Orchestras Live/ Symphonia Viva; Lincolnshire VS & Adverse Camber; Rutland VS & Northampton Music and Performing Arts Trust; Staffordshire VS & Care to Dance; Warwickshire VS & Culture Coventry and Wolverhampton VS & Arena Theatre.

With our colleagues from ICRD at Wolverhampton University we ran training in action research, supported each partnership to develop a research question, a methodology and a research plan, and supported each with a small grant towards costs for artists, materials and travel. They all successfully completed their projects and reported back at a sharing event in June.

What did we find out?

That there is high demand in the cultural sector for knowledge and preparation for working with Virtual Schools but they find it very hard to access the key people and be able to have an equitable conversation.

There is demand in the sector for building partnerships and meaningful relationships rather than being positioned in pitching or making transactional retail offers as many VSs have no awareness of organisations or what makes for high quality work.

There is a appetite for upskilling staff in the practice of evaluation, evidence generation and generating practice led research insights.

There is no substitute for partnership building than doing a project together and building relationships of trust. The action research approach structured the partnership, encouraging curiosity and very practical problem solving while generating new knowledge.

Working with children in care is not about big numbers. Each project contributed different knowledge to the collective understanding of how to overcome barriers. We learned about many dimensions – youth voice, agency and co-construction in media work; creating the right environment and offering choice in a gallery and arts venue; the value of role models and young leaders in dance; the need to engage foster carers; what is required to engage ‘first time’ participants and retain them; how travel distances, venues and timings matter; the potential of social workers and other professionals to provide support.

It is a great privilege to work with inspiring people who are ambitious for their work, staff and their beneficiaries. We are drawing together the findings with EAP Associates, the external evaluators, for sharing later this autumn and are keen to build upon and expand the gains from this programme and keep the momentum going.