East London Dance (ELD) is a regional dance agency with a commitment to total access to dance participation and quality experiences for the diverse communities in East London. We have been developing radical access programmes that nurture art, education, social inclusion and the role of dance in supporting economic regeneration.
We are currently engaged in a three year initiative of participatory and skills training activities for disadvantaged young people - Urban Moves, and have just embarked on Physical Justice, a two year programme contributing to the rehabilitation of young offenders.
Physical Justice as a concept was born in June 2002 as a response to Arts Council England's Dance Included funding programme. As a new dance manager, I relished the opportunity to attempt fundraising and knew that my efforts would be well supported by the Artistic Director (Kiki Gale) and Part Time Development Director (Anthony Peppiatt) of East London Dance. However, the part which particularly enthused me was the ability to 'dream up' a project, absolutely from its inception rather than being brought in a few steps down the line to coordinate the 'nuts and bolts'.
The first decision to be made was which area of social exclusion did we want our project to address. Crime leapt off the page immediately because offenders of any age are a client group which ELD has not intentionally worked with before and therefore organisational learning would be inherent. Although we already work with young people who are socially disadvantaged, the prospect of finding out if dance really can impact on offending behaviour or provide an effective alternative activity to crime thrilled me.
From that point onwards I began to explore possible themes and ideas that would interest a group of potentially very disillusioned young people, and to consider how on earth I could convince them that dance might well be the catalyst for them turning their lives around, when the every day issues which confront them are so grave. I was clear from the outset that I would need to research this client group thoroughly as my personal and ELD's organisational expertise in this area was limited.
I had recently begun sitting on a committee in the London Borough of Redbridge called 'Action For Loxford'. This multi-agency group seeks to address issues which affect the local community and is coordinated by the Redbridge Youth Offending Team (YOT). I was therefore happily just networked in to this very new group of people. I set up a meeting with Tracey Moore (then Education Officer of Redbridge YOT), to run through my emerging ideas with her, and to find out if she thought they could work or would be a complete waste of time! My first meeting with Tracey was indispensable and introduced me to the complicated world of the youth justice system and the various existing structures and stringent monitoring requirements within it. Happily, she liked my ideas and thought they would work. What was very clear from this initial meeting was that we could not just go bowling in to a YOT and expect its members to participate in a dance workshop. We had to make it relevant, we had to think of a 'hook', there would need to be incentives - a certificate or qualification, as most young offenders have none of these so to speak and more than anything else the project would have to be cool!
With the information gleaned from this first discussion, the project began to take shape. At least I knew now what definitely would not work. I began to explore ideas for hooks and knew from my previous work with young people that usually if you get the music right, everything else follows. The idea of a 'dance-led', cross-arts project followed and one which involved elements of graffiti art, music production, film-making and dance seemed to be a way of accessing and captivating as many young offenders as possible. Hip Hop as a genre also seemed useful as it already encompasses all of the above art forms. I also began to think about a loose structure for the project which fell under the following headings: Research, Training, Pilot and Delivery, and was determined to have a long lead-in time in order to complete the necessary learning and research so as not to 'run before we could walk'.
As the concept for the project grew, I began to bounce ideas off Kiki and Anthony. Numerous valuable elements came from my early meetings with them, such as the production of something tangible (probably a DVD rom) which participants could take away as a record of their hard work. It also became increasingly important to us all that not only the participant's work, but also the work of the artists and apprentices was accredited.
On a personal level, my experience of creating budgets at that point was very limited and I needed great encouragement to 'think big' and show how I would spend what to me at that point were unimaginably large amounts of money.
The next step was to collect biographies of artists who we would like to work on the project. Bearing in mind we were in early 2002 and the tasters would not begin until January 2004. I knew we would need a team of artists across the disciplines, and a willingness to commit to the project. It also became clear that an Artistic Director to manage the team would be absolutely vital. Artists were contacted and the response was good. Interestingly, people seem to fall in to one of two camps regarding this work, either a) totally enthusiastic, or b) absolutely not. Perhaps the most encouraging area was music. After one simple email to the record label 'Ninja Tunes', I was contacted by MC's, singers, rappers, and musicians not only from their label but also from others as far-flung as New York. It seems that many people within the Hip-Hop scene have a link to or used to live in East London - they understand the social and economic issues, and as somebody who has been there, they want to give something back. I began to get excited about the possibility of having a high profile musical element in the project.
East London Dance operates across seven London boroughs and it was always my aim to run Physical Justice in all of them. I very much saw it as a rolling project which, of course subject to funding, would have a life far beyond the first pilot. However, the way in which I designed the project meant that it would be impossible to run the project in more than three boroughs at any one time unless we received funding for another Project Coordinator. The decision about which boroughs would pilot the project remained, so I sent a project outline and fax-back form out to the YOT managers from all seven boroughs in order to let them decide for me. I received three forms back from the London Borough of Redbridge, Barking & Dagenham and Havering - I had project partners.
It was always our intention to source alternative funding to the Dance Included Programme in case our bid wasn't successful and in order to maximise the project budget as it stood. Anthony had discussed the project with Jane Attenborough of the Paul Hamlyn Foundation (PHF), and she recommended that we apply for the same amount as we would receive from ACE at the next round. The bid needed a few amendments to satisfy the PHF criteria but was submitted. Following this Anthony and I presented the project to Jane at the PHF offices. This was a fairly nerve-wracking experience as I knew the details of the project and so had to answer a fair amount of Jane's questions.
I have learnt and continue to learn many things from the Physical Justice experience and have developed many new skills too. Firstly, I have learnt that it is important to be absolutely certain of the details of your proposal, and to be realistic about costs. It is essential to think through a project from start to finish in as much detail as is possible and to anticipate potential challenges and setbacks from the outset, planning for how these may be addressed. Most importantly it taught me to have confidence in myself and my ideas and not to be intimidated by firstly a funding system which for me until that point had been rather mysterious and secondly a section of society which is still actively excluded.
My learning around the youth justice system and young offenders themselves has been exponential. It is a totally different structure to work within, and in many cases a different language with lots of acronyms! I have also learnt that as with schools, YOTs are different from borough to borough. On a basic level, some boroughs have more crime, so the YOT there will be busier. Therefore it is more difficult to arrange meetings with staff from a busy YOT. The infrastructure and activities available at the YOT also differ greatly and again as with schools work depends largely on the enthusiasm of the personnel.
By July 2002 we had heard that our bid to ACE Dance Included was successful for the full amount of £60,000 and by the Autumn we had received confirmation from PHF of a further £60,000. We had signed letters of support from the YOT managers at all three boroughs. On March 31 2003 the Physical Justice Project Coordinator, Lisa Scott began work and we are now expectantly watching the project unfold in front of us and continuing to learn all the time.
Alex Kenyon is projects manager at East London Dance. Contact 020 8279 1050 or email office@eastlondondance.org