Lessons from delivering our first national action research project

There were four key questions which we agreed with Arts Council England:

1. How can cultural and creative partners best serve care-experienced children and young people?
2. How can carers, social workers, designated teachers and the wider community of stakeholders around the child be fully engaged to support their education and development?
3. What’s the relationship between arts and creativity, and social pedagogy? Can this be explored through virtual schools?
4. How can virtual schools and mainstream schools work better together for the benefit of care-experienced children and young people?

We commissioned tialt to work with us on the project, gathering the learning that came out of the project. This included facilitating learning and reflection sessions with the partnerships and pulling together data and evidence from the programme to understand overall learning and impact

Blue Cabin hadn’t worked with another organisation in this way before so it was quite new for us.

Read the report which tialt have produced, sharing learning from Artful Alliance>> 

There were training opportunities for all the partners to attend, before they started on their project planning and delivery. These included sessions with Professor Richard Rose of Therapeutic Life Story Work International, and with Kazzum Arts on trauma-informed working and social pedagogy.

We acknowledged that the virtual schools in particular may well have experience of trauma informed practice, but for some organisations it was completely new. And even for those with previous knowledge we think it offered a useful refresher and new perspectives.

We also offered buddying with one of Blue Cabin’s team of associate artists and supervision (supportive conversations with a clinical therapist) from one of our therapeutic supervisors, Matt Stalker.

Putting this training and capacity-building in place comes from Blue Cabin’s deep-seated belief and understanding about how important it is for practitioners to be supported to deliver safely-held work with care-experienced children and young people. This includes an understanding of trauma and attachment and also knowledge of how practitioners can keep themselves safe through therapeutic supervision and self care.

We let people know the dates of the training as part of the application process so they knew exactly what they were signing up for. We asked people to name two representatives from each organisation who would be involved, including a senior person with the authority to make decisions. We hoped that this would mean at least one person from each organisation could always attend.

It took some epic organisation to plan the dates and get them in everyone’s diaries but it was worth it! The training gave time and space for organisations to come together right at the start of the project and strengthened the relationship between the partners before they began any delivery.

• Build in time for questions during recruitment: We offered a time and space for people to ask questions and talk to members of the Blue Cabin team before deciding whether or not to apply. This was useful and something we would do again.
• Make use of critical friends: Because this was the first time Blue Cabin has managed a national action learning programme we asked one of our trustees, Catherine Hearne, and Calvin Kipling, head of Darlington Virtual School and communications lead for the National Association of Virtual School Heads, to act as critical friends. They reviewed our plans and supported Blue Cabin in the recruitment process.
• Model best practice in terms of how arts and cultural organisations work with freelancers: As with all Blue Cabin’s work, we made sure that budgets throughout included appropriate daily rates for any freelancers and that reflection time was included.

We would plan more time for conversations about what therapeutic supervision involves, its purpose and how it can be beneficial. We provide supervision to our associate artists and know that they find it incredibly valuable, however it was a new concept for some partners and it proved to be challenging to get time booked in for it to happen.

The report summarising the learning from Artful Alliance has been published and is available to read here.

We also held a celebration and sharing event where we invited each partnership to deliver a presentation sharing, in whatever form they wanted, their project and their key learning.

Blue Cabin and all the partners will also continue to share learning on an ongoing basis. For example, North Yorkshire Virtual School are planning to deliver a presentation about their work at a national conference they are attending.

You can learn more about Artful Alliance and read the final evaluation report here>>

(Pictured above: A photo from Creative Briefs, one of the organisations which took part in Artful Alliance, showing young people taking part in a Creative Camp).