The Benefits of Integration

ADRIAN CLARK reports on the wide-ranging activities of the Community, Learning and Leisure section in the Highland capital.

THIS IS PROBABLY not the time to be writing, with deadlines slipping by for the Day of Dance, the visits by overseas performance groups, and the summer programme in our sights. However some of you may wish know what this particular Local Authority Arts Officer gets up to.

The Arts section, which includes the Traditional Music Coordinator, and shares responsibility for the Cultural Coordinator and Local Motion programmes, is now part of an integrated service Community, Learning and Leisure section, which is itself part of Education, Culture and Sport. The opportunities for working with colleagues in schools and communities have increased, and so too have the length of meetings, but dividends are beginning to show in terms of projects.

One such project which we have recently completed in the Merkinch Area involved close working with the workers and clients in the Social Inclusion area. New Dynamics was the name given to a Scottish Arts Council National Lottery supported programme of new media residencies in 7 SIP Areas around the Highlands. All 7 projects took part in the interview day in Fort William and chose their preferences from the dozen artists presenting their work.

Gavin Lockhart was chosen to work in Merkinch with a brief of working with 14 to 25 year olds. In the end he worked, beyond the call of duty, with 3 distinct groups: the teenage attenders at the mp33 community centre, artists at the Corbett Centre and the group of mums from the Escape Group.
 
The teenagers were least easy to enthuse but did help in the redesign of the mp33 website. www.mp33.org.uk . Gavin produced a video and original soundtrack of the Corbett Centre artists, which was shared at an open evening exhibition event.

The finale for the residency was a projection of films made by the Escape group onto the boarded up windows of a condemned block of flats, combined with extracts from all the no 1 hits since the flats were built in 1968! The project has helped enthuse the participants to make a film of their planned ascent of Ben Nevis.

“All these projects require considerable effort in terms of practical collaboration and partnership funding but the results are there to see”

The integration with Education has made life easier for the Local Motion project, which is the Inverness end of a 3 year Highland wide Out of School Hours project funded by the New Opportunities Fund. The small team, led by Cath Giles, a mature dance graduate, offers a wide range of physical activities (from circus skills and drumming to parachute games and basketball) to Primary Schools in the Inverness Area, during the lunch hour and immediately after school.
 
The take-up by schools and pupils alike has been excellent with the head-teachers helping in the identification of age groups and putting the word out. Their cooperation has helped the project to reach it targets (some 5000 contact sessions to date). Now the project is receiving a boost from the newly appointed Active Schools Coordinators in working with and training volunteers locally.

The Schools Cultural Coordinator programme, a Scottish Executive and Local Authority partnership project, too has helped to strengthen links between schools and practising artists and other specialists and has also created additional links with the community. Given that the post is only 2 days per week and that there are some 45 schools in the Inverness Area, it was felt sensible to concentrate on smaller clusters.

Caroline Storey has worked closely with the associated schools of Inverness Royal Academy and Charleston Academy. Over the past year pupils have been involved in ceramics projects with Deborah Carter; creative writing workshops with Janet MacInnes, the Scottish Poetry Library and a residency with Kevin MacNeill; music and storytelling with Bob Pegg and Choman Hardi (‘writer across frontiers’ at Moniack Mhor); silk painting with Heather Butlin; and a Barefoot Schubert Workshop with Paragon Ensemble, which led on to a very productive music residency by Steve King.
  
Gordon the Viking has visited, so too Siyaya, a Zimbabwean performance group and pupils from a number of primaries came to Phipps Hall to see Catherine Wheel’s production of ‘A Little Gentleman’. Additional funding was achieved from the Scottish Arts Council for a Highland wide ‘Time Travellers’ project which involved pupils from four Inverness Primaries in exploring the local heritage and making high quality digital collages, which will go on exhibition and CD. The Cultural Coordinator programme concluded in January but Stage 2 is shortly to be launched.

Meanwhile the Traditional Music programme, coordinated by Margo Maclennan, goes from strength to strength. In addition to the 200 or so regular pupils, there have been successful shorter projects in Tomatin and Dalneigh. A performance group, TMC Folk, led by David Bowen and Irene Rule, is now separately constituted and the dance group TX Steppers are also setting up on their own. The Caledonian Canal Ceilidh Trail, which receives funding from SAC and British Waterways Scotland, will make its fourth annual appearance over 4 weeks this summer.
 
 All these projects require considerable effort in terms of practical collaboration and partnership funding but the results are there to see – and with summer on the way the life of this particular Arts Officer hopes to get away from his desk and enjoy some of what is on offer. This includes visits by Culturebank from Australia, Diptesh Bhattacharya, an Indian sarod player, the Dudariki folklore group from Belarus, the Waggish Raddish Children’s Theatre group from Hungary, the Cleveland Youth Wind Symphony from Ohio amongst many other exciting acts coming this way

© Adrian Clark, 2005