Citizenship is now a key part of the National Curriculum and arts organisations can provide a significant support to work in the classroom. Tim Desmond describes the work of the National Centre for Citizenship and the Law.
“Learn from the past, act in the present, change the future” … this is the opportunity being offered to young people by the National Centre for Citizenship and the Law (NCCL) based in Nottingham. Through a range of innovative programmes, the centre is helping thousands of young people to become active citizens, aware of their rights and responsibilities.
The centre is housed in the Galleries of Justice, itself the site of the Shire Hall where once the citizens of Nottingham lost their civil liberties in the courtrooms, were locked in prison or, for the worst offenders, executed on the gallows on the front step. What better venue for learning about what citizenship means?
The NCCL, an educational charity, is based in a new multi-media resource centre called the Citizens’ Zone, which includes a gallery space for community-orientated exhibitions. The centre is made up of three sections: Schools and Colleges, Crime Reduction and Community. The centre can host half-day visits for school students, with historical mock trials and interactive tours of the courtrooms and prison, in addition to more intensive and supportive programmes for young people, including those on the Life Skills programmes and young offenders. Projects cover three areas of citizenship: rights and responsibilities; community involvement; and legal and literacy.
Schools projects
The Recycle project is the centre’s flagship programme. It runs three times a year and works with 13 and 14 year-olds from two comprehensives in Clifton, a large council area in the suburbs. The young people taking part have dropped out of the mainstream for any number of reasons. The project meets on Monday evenings in a local youth club and includes visits to the Galleries of Justice and an outdoor activity course. Participants choose a subject related to their lives and community and over 12 weeks work together to produce a video, or musical soundscape. Their achievements on the project contribute towards the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award.
One of the Recycle project’s strengths is the high adult to student ratio. Two community police officers, a facilitator from the NCCL, a digital artist and one or two trained adult volunteers work as part of a team with about ten young people. While the adults act as strong role models, by working side by side with them, the young people are able to form a very different, and positive, relationship. Young people who have already completed the project later return to act as mentors. The project has also helped to break down the rivalry between the two schools.
The more intensive Big Up Yourself project takes place over seven days at the Galleries of Justice and involves up to nine schools from the East Midlands. Students collaborate with digital artists to produce a website focusing on crime from a youth perspective.
Opportunity for all
The tendency for schools and agencies is to give the NCCL those children they have labelled as troublemakers. However the NCCL has learnt from experience that it is easier to work with a mixed group, rather than with an entire group of the most problematic youngsters. For the Big Up Yourself project about a third may have behaviour problems and they will get extra support. The remainder may be disengaged for various other reasons and the focus is on opportunity.
Other programmes have looked at the nature of protest, building on the historical connection with the Luddites and Suffragettes, who were tried here in days gone by, and their fight for rights. One group of Life Skills trainees chose to protest about the large numbers of students in Nottingham and how, in their view, they did not contribute to the local community. This led to a fruitful exchange of views between the trainees and students and staff at one of the city’s universities.
In 2003 the NCCL won the inaugural Gulbenkian prize for most innovative museum project. The £100,000 prize is being ploughed back into the organisation to secure jobs for the future and build a Victorian street for special needs students.
Tim Desmond is Head of the National Centre for Citizenship and the Law in Nottingham.
t: 0115 952 0555;
e: timdesmond@galleriesofjustice.org.uk;
w: http://www.nccl.org.uk