Rurality - what this means for young people
Creative Arts East is an arts and community development charity, and one of our primary focuses throughout all of our work in East Anglia, including our Youth Music programme, is to engage those living in rural, culturally under-served communities in high-quality arts and cultural activities, by trying to overcome any barriers that they might face to participation. This mission has informed the development of our ‘Create, Encourage, Promote’ Youth Music programme, which aims to provide young people living in these communities with the highest quality music provision, by delivering the training and support young people need to organise, manage and host professional music events for themselves, their peers and family and the wider community.
A recent article in Norfolk’s local paper, the Eastern Daily Press, highlighted the outcomes of a recent study which stated that one of the main drawbacks of growing up in a rural county is the lack of youth-orientated activities, and it’s interesting to think about this alongside our Youth Music Programme and the results we’ve been seeing so far. Youth Advisory Boards have been running in conjunction with Norfolk County Council and the various district and borough councils across the county in order to involve young people in assessing the quality of provisions for them in the local area, and a recent Norfolk-wide survey of more than 10,000 11-19-year-olds were asked in a Youth Advisory Board consultation: “What are the issues for young people in your district?”. 55% of respondents said that a lack of activities and things to do was a significant issue that they faced, which clearly shows that rurality is a major barrier to participation in activities of any kind, let alone arts activities. This further indicates the importance of youth-led arts activities being available to young people living in rural communities, and that even though we’ve seen some brilliant outcomes during our programme, it’s evident that rurality is still a significant barrier to young people’s participation.
We’ve been running our Youth Music Programme ‘Create, Encourage, Promote’ since 2012 and it is currently in its third phase. From 2014 to 2016 we saw 97.8% of participants indicate an interest in attending other musical/cultural events after participating, so we hope that by continuing this programme we can do our part to provide more activities for young people living in rural areas. Keep an eye out for our first national event later this year, developed and delivered in partnership with Lincolnshire One Venues, where we will be exploring the theme of youth leadership and scoping what a potential national network might look like. For information about this and other work we do please visit our blog https://creativeartseastblog.wordpress.com/