Raw Canvas

Name of lead agency?

Tate Modern, supported by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation

Name of partner agencies?

All Tate sites: Liverpool, Britain and St Ives.

How many young people took part?

Training course: 108 to date.
Events: circa 3000 participants per annum.

What paid staff took part and what were their roles?

Curator: Youth Programmes 2.5 days a week.
Assistant Curator: Youth Programmes 2 days a week (post made July 2004).

All members of the Raw Canvas team are paid for their work on the programme.

Artists and specialists are brought in to facilitate different events, the peer leaders are always supported by an artist educator when working with the public.

What was the aim of the project?

Raw Canvas aims to:

Develop confidence in 15-23 year olds to use Tate Modern in ways that are relevant to them.
Encourage young people to become regular gallery users to bridge the gap between the school trip and the independent visit.
Provide a year long programme of peer led activities which attract a wide audience of young people.
Establish a channel through which young people's ideas can be heard in respect of all activities at Tate Modern.
To increase knowledge and understanding of international modern and contemporary art amongst 15-23 year olds.
To give professional development experience to 15-23 year olds in the museum and gallery industry.

Main focus

Young people's development, peer leadership, team working and building new audiences.

Main policy links

Social inclusion with a focus on cultural entitlement. Skills training for young people who wish to work in the arts industries and routes for progression into work and further/higher education.

Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Crossing the Line: Extending Young People's Access to Cultural Venues, 1999.
DCMS, 1999 PAT 10 report.
DCMS, Learning to Listen review document, 2003.
Thinking Outside the Box, Galloway and Stanley, 2003.
Markets and Users, S Selwood, 2000.
Testing the Water: Young People and Galleries, Tate Liverpool.

How did the young people get involved?

Targeted outreach projects, advocacy, partnerships and word of mouth. The website is our main marketing tool at present.

What 'needs' were you trying to address?

Young people's access to culture.
Young people's self and professional development.

Tate's mission statement:
Tate's wish to build a youth audience and an advisory group to guide Tate on all aspects of it's service to young people in order to 'increase the public's knowledge and understanding of modern and contemporary art'.

How the work was planned?

Advisory group 1999/2000. (Gallery opened in May 2000)
Youth team of 20 trained every year since 2001.
Founding Curators (Caro Howell, Esther Sayers and Naomi Horlock).
Many artists and artist educators and young people.

What took place?

Programmes for 15-23 year olds at Tate Modern were established by an advisory group of young people in 1999. Since 2001, we have run five Raw Canvas training courses in which 108 young people have taken part. After they have been trained the team get involved in all aspects of running the programme. They think up ideas for gallery based activities, run workshops for their peers, organise parties, drop-in days and artists talks, they give outreach presentation, create marketing material for print and for output through their website. All of the team attend a monthly meeting at which the programme is shaped.

Partnerships between youthwork and the arts?

Run by artists and art specialists first and foremost, in partnership with youth organisations.

How was the project evaluated?

Evaluation is conducted after each session through the use of forms and video interviews. Evaluation data was collated by Galloway and Stanley, CEDAR, Warwick University in 2004/05.

What were the main outcomes measured?

Programme aims are addressed and success measured in a series of six monthly reports for the Paul Hamlyn Foundation. A research partnership for the evaluation of the Raw Canvas programme was guided by Galloway and Stanley and conducted by peers leaders in 2004-05. Audience numbers have steadily increased over the past 4 years. The programme has yet to find a way of tracking 'repeat customers' in a systematic way rather than through the recollection of session leaders. The aim of fostering access for young people is addressed through the very wide variety of activities which Raw Canvas offers to young people as individuals.

Funders

Paul Hamlyn Foundation

In kind contributions
Think Pod
Upstream

Why was this a good piece of work with young people?

Raw Canvas has been successful in developing young people's potential by using innovative methods, including peer led and consultative approaches, to engage young people outside of formal education and the school curriculum with visual culture, art practices and the work of museums. It has been built around young people's needs and expectations, including responsibility for planning and running activities, offering social opportunities and breaking down the perceived elitism of the cultural industries.

How were young people's achievements recognised?

At the end of the training course young people present ideas for events or strategies for audience development (i.e marketing of evaluation etc) to the group, including other participants, the curator and peer leaders. After the training course all Raw Canvas team members are paid for their work on the programme and the ideas that are initiated on the training course are often developed into Raw Canvas' public programme.

What lessons were learned?

Consultation must be followed by action, limits must be discussed at the start so that expectation for change following consultation are not unrealistic.

What next?

To establish Young Tate across all four Tate sites with the aim of increasing the reach and impact of Tate's work to benefit young people who are keen on visual culture, to draw in those who are not and those whose potential will be enhanced through participation in the lives of their local galleries.

Details provided by:

Esther Sayers, Curator.
Lizzie Neilson, Assistant Curator: Youth Programmes.
Tate Modern, Bankside, London SE1 9TG
Tel: 0207 401 5071/5126.
Email: raw.canvas@tate.org.uk
Web: www.tate.org.uk/rawcanvas

Case Studies 2005 - Raw Canvas