Creative Youthwork Network
Click for more information and materials of this innovative youthwork EU project!
Images of Creative Youthwork Sympusium (25 of March in 2018) are available on this link.
The CYN Strategic Partnership addresses more than one field of learning is made up of 4 European Countries (Croatia – Leader, UK, Czech Republic, Hungary) who are seeking to work together to develop and test a series of intellectual outputs and materials than can be used to better engage and support disadvantaged young (and other) learners through the use of media and arts.
Creative Youthwork Network is a cross field partnership of Youth, VET and community organisations engaging with young people and others will develop innovative education training methodologies and outputs that can better support disadvantaged groups to reconnect with learning, training in developing skills and having fun whilst addressing a multitude of issues that they face personally and professionally.
Throughout Europe, youth workers strive to invent and deliver activities that will engage with the hard and hardest to reach young people. The project is inspired by the need to find engaging and attractive ways to bring young people back to education. It is notable that young people who are neither in education, training nor employment (NEETs) have become so because of their personal history of learning (that was often neither fruitful nor enjoyable), a lack of motivation to strive for targets that appear unobtainable, and their lack of confidence in themselves.
Media and art themed workshops can address each of these obstacles; providing engaging and enjoyable learning, recognising and enhancing current capabilities, developing confidence, and ultimately promoting young people to set personal targets and take action towards participating in further education and towards employment.
Our rationale and need for the Creative Youthwork Network project is common across our partner countries and more broadly across the EU, addressing high levels of unemployment particularly amongst people with deprivation and disadvantage.
This project first designs and delivers a workshop that develops skills and competences in youth workers to act generically to design and facilitate educational workshops aimed at engaging and inspiring hard to reach young people, such as NEETs. Then the workshop builds the skills of youth workers to design, resource and deliver themed workshops. The project progresses from an outline workshop programme (attached) to full content and resources
Having contributed to the overall design of the workshop, each of the project partners will send youth workers to participate.
The project culminates in each of the partner organisations designing a themed workshop that is relevant to their nation/region. This will result in a bank of themed workshops made available as OER, that each of the partner organisations can offer to young people.
Through this process of first developing the skills and competencies of youth workers (target group 1), the project then has built capacity to reach and impact directly onto young people (target group 2). The delivery of such media and arts themed workshops to young people may be regional or national event, that is delivered through the national funding received by the project partners. In building a network of project partners (that has to potential to engage with a growing number of partners), the project has the potential to create a European network of youth organisations.
Hence the project is transnational as it:
– develops a consistent level of skills and competencies in youth workers
– values and shares musical heritages across Europe
– builds a future network of youth organisations who will engage young people with the EU agenda.
