Youth Voice Consultation

Guidance for Schools

Thank you for your interest in Ignite Creativity’s Youth Voice consultation.

This vital project will be key to developing cultural provision for young people in Calderdale, and we need your help to do this.

About the Youth Voice Consultation

The project aims to gain insights into the current state and perceptions of cultural educational provision for children and young people in Calderdale. As a valued local teacher, your input is crucial in helping us better inform our strategic and action planning for children and young people in collaboration with our wider membership and partners.

The survey will provide an opportunity for you to share your valuable perspective and experiences related to cultural education within Calderdale. By gathering information on the existing landscape, challenges, and opportunities, we can work towards enhancing the provision of arts and culture for children and young people in our community.

There is a separate survey for each of the following groups:

  • 12-16 year olds

  • Arts and cultural organisations and practitioners

  • Parents, guardians and carers

  • Teachers, support staff and governors

  • Youth services and infrastructure

The surveys can all be accessed online at the following link: https://www.ignite-creativity.org.uk/youth-voice-project.

We understand that your time is valuable, and we appreciate your willingness to contribute to this important initiative. The survey takes approximately 15 minutes to complete, and all responses remain anonymous.

The survey will close on Friday 27th October 2023, and we really appreciate your help in getting as many responses as possible. The more responses we have, the more information we'll have to improve and appropriately develop cultural education for young people in Calderdale. A report will be circulated on the survey’s results at the end of the year, which will inform cultural programming for young people across Calderdale in formal and informal learning environments.

Completing the Survey

Students aged 12-16

With this information sheet, you will have several worksheets that your students can use to answer the survey. At the end of this document are prompts that can be used in tutor time or art, PSHE or literacy lessons to help students fill in the worksheet.

We can easily deliver more worksheets to your school - please email sammi@ignite-creativity.org.uk to arrange this. Once your students have filled in the worksheets, please let us know and we will arrange to collect them from your school.

We can also offer facilitated sessions where one of our members of staff will come into your school to deliver a free workshop with your students. To enquire about this, please email sammi@ignite-creativity.org.uk.

Teachers and Parents

The online survey can be accessed at https://www.ignite-creativity.org.uk/youth-voice-project. We would appreciate it if you could share this link with all  teaching staff and governors in your school, as well as parents through any online areas, groups or newsletters.

We can also provide a printed version of the survey, as well as flyers to give to parents - please email sammi@ignite-creativity.org.uk to request this.

  • Ignite Creativity was formed to advocate for, support and strategically develop the cultural education of children and young people in Calderdale. We are Calderdale’s LCEP (local cultural education partnership) and work with a variety of local partner organisations and individuals.

    Our aim is to ensure that every child and young person in Calderdale has access to valuable and high-quality cultural experiences. To do this, we want to make sure that we are engaging with as many people as possible involved with cultural education for children and young people in Calderdale.

  • There are lots of ways for you and your school to get involved with Ignite Creativity.

    Network Meetings

    Our next network meeting will be held on Thursday 12th October, 3.30-5pm at the Prince’s Trust, 31 Gibbet Street, HX1 5BA.

    You can find out more and reserve your spot here: https://www.ignite-creativity.org.uk/events/october-2023-network-meeting.

    Held 3 times a year, our network meetings are open to all involved with cultural education of children and young people in Calderdale, with a mix of teachers, freelancers, cultural organisations and youth services. They are designed as a relaxed space to help the sector connect with each other and develop relationships, as well as acting as a platform to communicate information about projects and local initiatives.

    Join as a Member

    Membership is free and open to all involved with cultural activities for children and young people in Calderdale, whether you are a school, freelancer, organisation or youth group.

    You will have a free listing on our website as part of our directory, which can be used to show your partnerships with local organisations. You will also have priority access to all future events and training.

    We hold 3 network meetings a year for our members, where you can find out about current events, projects and opportunities, and network with others in the sector. Once you sign up as a member, we offer a free 1-1 call to see how we can support you and work together to develop cultural education for your students.

    You can learn more and join as a member here: https://forms.gle/P9ouYYUhhLhpoAtb8.

    Social Media

    Follow us on social media @ICCalderdale on Facebook, X and Instagram. We’re always happy to share and promote posts about cultural activities and achievements of young people in Calderdale, so please tag us in your posts

    Newsletters

    Ignite Creativity sends out regular newsletters with updates on our activities, information about projects and events by local partners, links to teaching resources, as well as information about national policies and reports.

    You can sign up for our newsletter here: https://www.ignite-creativity.org.uk/get-involved.

    You can also advertise your activities, school events and celebrations, as well as calls for partners or projects, through our newsletter. You can submit content to be added to the newsletter at any time through this link: https://forms.gle/7SubZK9PZMTffWsa6.

Worksheet Prompts and Lesson Planning

Introduction

Ignite Creativity is Calderdale’s Local Cultural Educational Partnership, and are working to develop the cultural learning offer available to children and young people living in our borough. We're looking to learn about all the ways young people can get creative in Calderdale, and we need your help!

Some key points:

  • All answers are kept anonymous.

  • You can opt out of answering any questions that you would not like to answer at any point in this survey.

  • You can read our participant information sheet here: www.ignite-creativity.org.uk/policies/youth-voice-participant-information.

  • We recommend scheduling 15-30 minutes for students to fill in the survey.

  • Students are welcome to attach extra pieces of paper to the survey if they have anything extra they would like to tell us through words or other artwork.

Section 1: About You

Although a lot of the information in this section is personal, it has been designed so that the students are not providing their name or any information that can identify them. Please remind students that all questions are optional.

It's important for us to know this information because lots of groups in Calderdale are under-represented and under-served by culture, which means that they miss out on getting their voice heard. We want to make sure that this survey reaches as many different people as possible in Calderdale.

Discussion with students:

  • Why might it be important to make sure that lots of different groups are represented in the survey?

  • Why is it important for everyone’s voices to be heard?

Section 2: Definitions of Creativity and Culture

This section includes two broad questions that are designed to give students space to start thinking about what creativity and culture involve.

Discussion with students:

  • What subjects involve creativity/culture?

  • Do you usually think of positive or negative words to describe creativity/culture?

Section 3: Creativity and Cultural Interests

Thinking about what students are interested in helps us to see which areas of culture should be developed more in Calderdale.

Discussion with students:

  • What interests and activities count as creative/cultural?

  • What are the things that they really enjoy doing?

  • It’s okay to not like anything on the list - it might be that they have very different interests, and culture comes in lots of different forms.

Section 4: Values and Perceptions of Creativity and Culture

How we value culture is a key part of developing the role that it plays locally. This section involves thinking a bit more intensively, and explores the students’ own feelings.

Discussion with students:

  • Why are creativity/culture important - to you and to other people?

  • Is there a point to creativity and culture? What might affect this?

  • When we ask about how creative and cultural activities make young people feel, this might not be how they feel every single time and with every single cultural activity but act as general statements to sum up how they usually feel.

  • It is okay to have lots of feelings about creative and cultural activities, even if the answers seemingly contradict themselves.

  • Have any of your students thought about a creative or cultural career? What might this look like?

  • How many careers are creative/cultural?

  • If they haven’t considered a creative/cultural career, why not? Are there any potential barriers?

Section 5: Access to Creativity and Culture

This section lets young people tell us about the kinds of activities that they are currently taking part in, which will help us to map the current provision of cultural activities in Calderdale.

Discussion with students:

  • How many of their regular activities are creative/cultural?

  • How many creative/cultural places have you been to?

  • Do you do these activities locally or further afield?

Section 6: Youth Voice

We want to know about how young people currently engage with culture, and any barriers that they feel they face.

Discussion with students:

  • How many people influence the decisions that they make about which activities to do?

  • Whose opinion is most important to them?

  • Which things are most important for them to take part in activities? This will be different for every person, and that’s okay - it is important for us to know about all of these different ideas.

  • What gets in the way of activities that they would like to do?

  • Is it hard to do the activities that they would like to do?

Section 7: Suggestions and Further Comments

This section is broad, and we invite comments about anything that might have come up while they have filled in the survey. Please feel free to attach extra sheets of paper with additional text or artwork in response to these questions and any others.