When it launched in November 2013, Time to Shine was Scotland’s first national youth arts strategy. It set out a 10-year-vision for the future of youth arts in Scotland, one in which children and young people are put at the heart of the decision-making process.
Now, in 2021, we all find ourselves working in a very different context to the one in which the strategy was launched. In the past 18 months we’ve seen the launch of a Culture Strategy for Scotland and the incorporation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child into Scottish Law, and the impact of the COVID 19 pandemic on children and young people.
Through the delivery of Time to Shine to date:
- Creative Scotland has worked with a National Youth Arts Advisory Group, who have aimed to represent a voice for young people within the delivery of the Strategy, carrying out advocacy work with other young people and publishing their recommendations for the future direction of the Strategy
- The Nurturing Talent Fund was established, which has grown to become an important mechanism for funding young people to develop their own creative ideas and project. Since 2014, the Fund has distributed £229,022 across 367 projects led by young people.
- The biennial UNCON has become an opportunity to celebrate artistic and creative work by and for children and young people, with events held in 2016, 2018 and a digital UNCON held in January 2021
This summer, the Time to Shine team at Creative Scotland will be working with stakeholders from across the sector to reflect on what we’ve learned from our delivery of Time to Shine to date, what’s needed in the current context and to look ahead to how we can work continue to work together with children, young people, and the sector to shape youth arts strategy in Scotland.
We’ll be working with some of the key partners from the past couple of years in a series of workshops starting on the 13th July, to explore how we can work better together.
We’ll be exploring how we continue to fund children and young people for their own creative ideas and projects; how we can experiment, take risks, and how we can ensure that everyone who wants to have their say can be included.
We’ll be holding 6 workshops between now and the end of September that will include:
- How can we better support collaboration between Creative Scotland, children, young people and the youth arts sector in shaping the national youth arts strategy?
- How can we continue to fund children and young people to develop, produce and present their own ideas and projects?
- How do we make sure less-heard voices are included?
- How do we create a broader range of opportunities for involvement in a National Youth Arts Advisory Group model for children, young people and the sector?
- How might we take risks and experiment with new ideas and ways of doing things?
If you’d like more information about this work, you can contact Sarah McAdam: [email protected]