Promoting Social Responsibility

Play

It

Straight

Promoting Social Responsibility

Amongst Marginalised and

Vulnerable Young People

A Collaborative Initiative Between

Theatre ADAD and

The ThamesValley Partnership

Evaluation Report Autumn 2006

Evaluation Report Preface

Thames Valley Partnership has worked with Theatre ADAD to deliver “Play It Straight” – a project using drama, interactive workshops and high quality resource materials to explore community and personal safety issues with young people in Pupil Referral Units. The aims of the project were to:

• Use interactive drama to engage young people at risk or excluded from mainstream education to promote personal and social responsibility and citizenship.

• Provide teachers and students with a powerful and effective way of tackling difficult issues such as drugs, relationships, gang and peer pressure and the consequences of offending.

• To support and empower Pupil Referral Unit staff and teachers to draw upon the experience of interactive drama, working with actors experienced in theatre in education methods.

We are very grateful to Theatre ADAD for conducting this detailed evaluation of the work based on extensive interviews, questionnaires and the experiences of the team of actors.

The evaluation demonstrates that interactive theatre continues to be an extremely powerful and effective way of engaging and working with some highly marginalised vulnerable and extremely difficult young people. The power and impact of drama, the highly skilled and effective approach of the actors, together with the relevant and challenging material has again proved to have considerable impact.

Our decision to introduce a one-year programme, rather than a series of one off events, has been effective in enhancing the impact of the work, enabling the actors to build on existing relationships with both staff and pupils. The evaluation demonstrates that the staff has felt able to use the scripts and the workshop material to continue to focus on the issues throughout other parts of the curriculum. In some cases involvement in the workshop has led to significant disclosures by pupils to their teachers of domestic violence or of offending.

What is also clear is that Pupil Referral Units in some areas are very poorly resourced, isolated from mainstream education, and struggle to provide even the basics for the highly disadvantaged young people in their care. Our attempts to help them secure continuing support and funding from local authorities or from other sources to continue to build on their experience has been disappointing and at the end of two years regrettably we are not confident that the work will gain the necessary support to continue.

We hope very much that this detailed evaluation will help our partners to make the case for continued support and funding for this approach so that Pupil Referral Units and young people can continue to have the benefits of this very professional approach.

We would like to take this opportunity of thanking not only our partners in Theatre Adad but also the staff and pupils in the thirteen Pupil Referral Units across the ThamesValley who has engaged so positively in the project.

Sue Raikes OBE

Chief Executive

ThamesValley Partnership

August 2006

Introduction

Play It Straight is a collaborative programme developed by Theatre ADAD and Thames Valley Partnership. The underlying objective of this programme was to create a sustained relationship with young people who have fallen outside of mainstream education. Invariably, these young people have become marginalised as a result of behaviour and needs that cannot adequately be addressed within mainstream schools. As such they represent both an immensely challenging and equally vulnerable group of young people who can arguably be deemed more at risk of falling into criminal; dangerous and anti-social behaviour patterns.

The Partners

Thames Valley Partnership works with statutory authorities, criminal justice agencies, community groups, schools, youth initiatives and local businesses to promote and support innovative work to impact on community safety. As such, they have gained widespread credibility in facilitating innovative projects to address some of the most challenging areas of crime prevention and community safety, such as: domestic violence; child sexual abuse; anti-social behaviour and substance misuse.

Theatre ADAD is a specialist creator of innovative and hard-hitting educational programmes that focus on issues of crime prevention, anti-social behaviour and personal safety. Using the captivating qualities of theatre to examine what influences choice and behaviour, programmes seek to encourage young people to develop positive life skills to help them make and implement more responsible lifestyle choices.

A History of Collaborative Working

Given the clear overlap of philosophy and objectives between these two agencies, it was a natural progression to work together. Indeed, ADAD and Thames Valley Partnership have worked together since the mid 1990’s, initially taking an anti car crime programme into local schools.

Based on this success, Thames Valley Partnership commissioned ADAD to develop and pilot a programme to stem future incidents of domestic violence by examining the elements of a relationship and defining what constitutes acceptable behaviour. This programme (Behind Closed Doors) has subsequently gained widespread recognition and praise and was cited by the Home Office/Cabinet Office as an example of good practice in 1998.

More recently, ADAD has again worked closely with Thames Valley Partnership to produce a programme explaining the Restorative Justice approach and aimed at developingVictim awareness. This was initially piloted with groups of young offenders with support from key RJ practitioners. Subsequently, this programme (Face To Face) proved a powerful means of depicting the stark human consequences of offending behaviour and promoting victim empathy

A Decision to Use Arts in Community Safety

For the last five years Thames Valley Partnership has been exploring the use of art as a way of engaging people and communities, exploring difficult personal and community safety issues, developing new skills and widening opportunities for both participants and artists. As with all the Thames Valley Partnership’s work they have acted as broker, bringing people together to open up and explore new approaches - in different setting and using different arts media. Interactive theatre has continued to be one of a number of arts based approaches used by the Thames Valley Partnership with young people to explore community safety.

A Focus On Marginalised Young People

Over the years of working together, both ADAD and Thames Valley Partnership have recognised the particularly strong impact that these types of programmes have with non-mainstream groups of young people.

The highly animated, energised and immediate experience of live theatre provokes reactions and participation from young people who generally struggle with more conventional methods of learning. Given that responses and participation happen as an emotional reaction to the characters and situations being presented directly in front of them, there is less of a feeling that responses ‘ought’ to be the carefully considered and reasoned arguments more generally associated with a classroom setting.

As such, ADAD programmes can provoke highly positive and productive responses both from young people within the specialist schools sector (displaying varying special educational needs, from emotional and behavioural difficulties to a range of learning and physical difficulties).

Likewise, ADAD programmes have historically appeared to provide a readily accessible and stimulating resource for young people who have been intentionally excluded from mainstream education. Invariably these young people have been excluded for unacceptable, ‘bad’ or disruptive behaviour (often resulting from underlying emotional or behavioural problems). Given that they have already fallen outside of the mainstream education system (even if the exclusion is for a fixed, temporary period) and are displaying some very challenging behaviour (some may already be on the margins of criminal, anti-social and self-harmful behaviour), these young people represent a particularly vulnerable and volatile target group.

The Play it Straight Approach

Recognising the potential benefits of using ADAD’s programmes with excluded and vulnerable young people (now either attending Pupil Referral Units – PRU’s – or Learning Support Units within schools – LSU’s), it was suggested that these benefits could be further enhanced by sustaining ADAD’s input within the PRU throughout an academic year.

Such a sustained input was expected to provide numerous benefits. Firstly, sustained and repeated input from ADAD staff would enable young people attending a PRU or LSU to gain a greater sense of trust and acceptance of both the approach and of the staff delivering it. This would then lead to more open and honest work within sessions. The sustained approach would also enable pupils within PRU’s and LSU’s to address and explore a variety of issues on social responsibility and citizenship.

It was also hoped that a sustained input within PRU’s and LSU’s would bring wider benefits to the staff and the general ethos of individual establishments. Through extended working with ADAD, it was hoped that PRU and LSU staff would achieve a greater literacy with the issues at hand and a greater confidence in incorporating some of the approaches and techniques adopted by ADAD.

Consequently, ADAD and Thames Valley Partnership set the following objectives for the Play it Straightprogramme:

• Using interactive drama to engage young people at risk or excluded from mainstream education to promote personal and social responsibility and citizenship

• Providing teachers and students with a powerful and effective way of tackling difficult issues such as drugs, relationships, gang & peer pressure and the consequences of offending

• Supporting and empowering PRU staff and teachers in ESC’s to draw upon the experience of interactive drama by linking with actors experienced in theatre-in-education

• Creating support networks for PRU/LSU teachers and LEA advisors to try out new methods using arts and to build new opportunities for collaborating with actors and artists.

An Initial Pilot

During the 2004/5 academic year it was decided to pilot Play it Straight in four PRU’s and one LSU in selected locations throughout the ThamesValley. The sites chosen were:

• BeechwoodSchool (LSU) – Slough
• Northbrook PRU – Slough
• Young People Out Of School (YPOS) (PRU) – Milton Keynes
• Manor Road Centre (PRU) – Milton Keynes
• Badger’s Hill Centre (PRU) – Reading

Each site received three visits from ADAD: one each term and each addressing a different personal/social responsibility topic. Additionally, introductory/training sessions for staff were held after the first visit to place the Play it Straight initiative as a whole into context and to preview the other programmes that would subsequently be given. The programmes given were:

• November 2004 – The Front Line – Knife crime and street robbery.
• February 2005 – Wasted – Substance misuse.
• May 2005 – Behind Closed Doors – Relationships and domestic violence.

Following this initial pilot, a dissemination event was hosted by Thames Valley Partnership in June 2005. This event was an opportunity for staff from the units involved in the pilot to meet, feed back on their experiences and to share ideas on how to further incorporate arts within their curriculum. Additionally, representatives from other units and LEA’s were invited to see previews of the programmes within Play it Straight and to sign up to the ‘rolled out’ initiative for the 2005/6 academic year.

Targeting Specialist Audiences

The central philosophy behind Play It Straight is the desire to specifically target marginalised and vulnerable young people. This aim itself presents several unique challenges and many perceived benefits.

Almost invariably, young people attend a PRU because they are struggling to cope within a mainstream school. Frequently, they are excluded because of ‘bad’ and ‘unacceptable’ behaviour and invariably this is the result of underlying emotional and behavioural issues and possibly even learning difficulties.

Invariably, the underlying problems that have lead to the ‘bad’ and ‘unacceptable’ behaviours also preclude these young people from fully engaging in, and benefiting from traditional teaching methods. For young people who already display challenging behaviour, traditional and formal classroom-based learning proves substantially inappropriate. Consequently, PRU’s strive to make learning as dynamic and flexible as possible in an attempt to successfully engage these young people. Necessarily, PRU’s are therefore much less formal and rigidly structured learning environments.

Given that they have frequently faced various difficulties that have resulted in their exclusion and move to a PRU, these young people are often emotionally volatile, ‘damaged’ and vulnerable individuals. This frequently manifests in them being unusually withdrawn, ‘closed’, hostile and suspicious of those seeking to help and educate them. In an environment of such heightened emotion and behaviour, there is a far greater pressure to have ‘front’ and not to ‘lose face’ amongst peers. Consequently, there can be a pervading “its all crap” mentality, quick to dismiss new and challenging experiences.

Give the range of challenging behaviours and manifest communication difficulties, this group of young people are also at greater risk. They have already been excluded from mainstream education and are experiencing the sense of alienation this brings, and are arguably more at risk of becoming more marginalised, increasingly embarking on risky, anti-social and criminal activities.

As such, these environments present a uniquely challenging and beneficial proposition to the working style and philosophy of ADAD.

The very dynamic, immediate and non-conventional nature of ADAD programmes make then much more accessible to this group of young people than traditional didactic teaching methods. Such an approach demands and prompts a response before young people have chance to consider and censor what they are going to contribute. Indeed, responses may even ‘sneak out’ before an individual has chance to decide that they are not going to contribute. Responses can therefore be said to be truly emotional as opposed to cerebral.

For many of the young people in this group, the situations and characters may well have much greater resonance with their own lives, representing things they can easily identify with. This in itself helps to build a greater feeling of inclusion.

Through repeated contact with these young people and an increased acceptance, trust and respect both for ADAD staff and the work being undertaken, there is potential to break down some of the barriers created by the young people. There may be a lessening of the “its all crap” mentality.

However, it is also important to concede that the populations of PRU’s are generally very fluid in that many pupils are excluded for fixed periods with an underlying objective of reintegrating them back into mainstream schooling. This fluidity is inevitably going to conflict with any initiative that seeks to contact the same pupils within PRU’s over the course of an academic year, in that some will not be there for the whole year.

The underlying ethos of many PRU’s also lends itself favourably to ADAD’s work. The greater flexibility of these establishments and willingness to embrace new and innovative teaching methods lends itself perfectly to an effective working partnership. Indeed, this greater receptiveness to new approaches, creates the potential for staff within PRU’s to capitalise with a sustained relationship with an organisation such as ADAD to explore and develop their own skills, competence and schemes of work to utilise similar arts-based techniques.

The Play it Straight Initiative

In line with the Pilot initiative, a selected number of PRU’s were given input from ADAD at several points during the academic year. In total, 13 sites were selected and a total of four ADAD visits scheduled. Each ADAD visit involved the delivery of a different theatre-in-education programme that addressed a different topic.

In addition to the four scheduled visits, each PRU was also encouraged to utilise the ADAD input to develop and explore their own teaching approaches. Additionally staff were encouraged to draw upon the extended relationship with both ADAD and Thames Valley Partnership in experimenting and developing new arts-based approaches.

The Selection of PRU’s

Building on the pilot initiative, Play it Straight was then offered to a total of 13 sites across the ThamesValley, including most of the sites involved in the pilot. Given that there were various problems working with the LSU in BeechwoodSchool (mostly to do with inconsistencies in the population of the LSU week to week), it was decided to concentrate on targeting PRU’s. However, in Milton Keynes pupils from selected school LSU’s were brought together under a scheme called The Excellence Cluster.