Themes

Three themes will deliver activities as vehicles to promote community cohesion delivered by and for young people as a means of breaking down barriers between different groups:

Drama

Utilising the Haymarket Theatre’s peripatetic drama programmes across the City, and working in partnership with Leicester Arts in Education and the Schools Development Support Agency three projects will generate cross-cultural contact between young people (aged 14-19) in neighbourhood areas. This will be through multi-arts workshops to challenge ideas around Place, Culture and Identity. We will initiate within schools collaboration between young people (aged 8-14) through writer, director, designer workshops devised to produce material for the theatre. Triplets of schools will be partnered up to encourage pupils to work alongside pupils with a different background to themselves. E-learning networks will be established to further promote contact and understanding between young people of different backgrounds. Wild Call will produce a video with gypsy and traveller young people exploring cultural identity and provide opportunities for contact with other groups of young people across the city.

Street Sports and Arts

The Sports Development Team and Leicester Race Equality Council will join in partnership to provide a vehicle to bring together young people on the margins of current provision and Black and Minority Ethnic and White young people in shared activity. This will build bridges between groups of young people based on their shared cultures and experiences through work in schools, youth facilities and work directly in the community by initiating neighbourhood and school based activities that build into inter-cultural and city-wide events. The culmination of all the above activities will lead to a youth ‘urban games’ event which will include for example: BMXing, basketball, skateboarding, blading, street hockey, street cricket, football, dance, deejaying, scratching, rapping, and graffiti art. It will also celebrate the achievements made during the Pathfinder Programme and will involve the drama and media themes. The Urban Games will provide an end focus for a process involving all young people engaged in the Pathfinder Programme to practice and utilise their skills.

Media

Working in partnership with the BBC Radio Leicester, Leicester Mercury and MATV we shall build on the excellent reputation the local media have on community cohesion issues by providing opportunities for young people to develop their communications skills and improve their employment prospects whilst promoting community cohesion. We shall train young people from deprived neighbourhoods in journalistic and presentation skills. Media partners will provide the technical training and ongoing activities to enable young people to generate news items for radio, print and film that will promote community cohesion. Other media orientated projects delivered by Soft Touch Community Arts, Youth VOICE and the Advice Services will facilitate dialogue between marginalised young people from different ethnic groups and areas of Leicester using audio and visual mediums to encourage mutual understanding and celebration of differences and commonalities. Each of these projects will leave a lasting legacy of video and other materials, including a best practice media toolkit for schools to promote good community relations.