I had no idea what it meant or where it had come from, so I had a little look around. The Cultural Learning Alliance came up with the goods:
Since 2006, strategic partners in Birmingham have been working together to develop A Creative Future, a strategy for children and young people (0-19 years) and the arts. The aim of the strategy is to increase access to the arts, raise the quality of arts activities and recognise the achievements of children and young people in the arts.
‘Strategic partners’ isn’t expanded upon, but Birmingham City Council seem to be leading on things and the pic on the CLA’s website is attributed to Craftspace.
To explain the diagram above:
The Birmingham model for cultural entitlement illustrates how the Creative Future roles overlap (see Venn diagram). The vertical axis shows how we would like to see young people progress through from first-time experiences to independent engagement, and on the horizontal axis how they develop skills and understanding from basic to advanced
I also found an interview with Val Birchall, head of BCC Arts Team, about one of the projects that came as a result of the strategy.
So there you go.
The version of this diagram (PDF) that accompanied the Hello Digital tender call has some explanatory text on it.
As Dave has linked – the CF model is actually really simple and useful. It’s about identifying where young people are at (creatively) and enables arts providers to support them in developing their own interests at a level appropriate to them.
Eg. John likes drawing. He’s never been to a gallery before, nor has he shared any of his drawings with anyone else. He likes watching animated films, and reads graphic novels. In this imaginary example we’d be able to see quickly that he’s already operating as a ‘creator’ but has limited experience as a ‘participant’. Finding new exhibitions for him to visit might be one way of helping him develop his creativity, or perhaps a group class somewhere like the mac. He may also want to find ways of sharing his work – either in person (exhibitions etc) or online (less confrontational!)
There’s loads of stuff happening under the CF banner and a website is currently in development. Many large arts orgs are delivering work that links into this strategy and currently we are responsible for developing a pilot youth arts signposting service that targets three areas of Birmingham:
http://creativefuture-whatson.tumblr.com
In addition, Hybrid are delivering a series of professional development work which links in as well – more info can be found here:
http://www.hybridconsulting.org.uk/connecting-arts-and-youth-sectors
(as a small side note, we talked to you about this a few months ago Chris! :)
Cheers both.