A Creative Future III – Birmingham’s strategy for children, young people, the arts and culture

Overview

In 2013 Birmingham City Council hosted its first ever Youth Arts Summit, asking young people of all ages, from across Birmingham, what was most important to them when participating in the cultural life of the city. In the year that followed we took a fresh look at A Creative Future, our strategy for young people the arts and culture, and widened our consultation to include professionals from across the arts and education sectors.

As well as consulting with Birmingham City Council Officers across a wide range of Local Authority services for children and young people, we carried out an extensive and wide ranging consultation process with young people and external partners and agencies which included:

• 120 young people aged 7 to 19 years from Birmingham’s primary and secondary schools attending the Birmingham Youth Arts Summit 2013 and 90 young people participating in the programme of Birmingham Youth Arts Summit outreach consultation.
• 160 young people aged 16 to 25 years attending The Big Debate event as part of the Birmingham Youth Arts Summit 2013.
• 20 young people aged 16 – 25 years, who formed The Birmingham Youth Arts Summit Steering Group
• Arts Connect West Midlands
• Birmingham Arts Partnership
• West Midlands Creative Alliance
• Services for Education, Music Service
• Birmingham Museums Trust
• DanceXchange
• mac
• Hillstone Primary School
• 4 in 5 Consortium
• Mayfield Special School
• Birmingham University
• Birmingham City University
• Birmingham Park View Trust
• Young people attending Creative Future youth sub-group consultation sessions
• Arts organisations attending open consultation session delivered by Birmingham Arts Partnership Learning sub-group
• Arts, training and educational organisations attending Creative Future Skills and Employability sub-group consultation session

Through a robust steering process we revised the strategy to meet the needs of young people in Birmingham today and now we would like to hear your views on the results of this process.

A Creative Future III builds on work, first started in 2006 but increases the focus on areas such as skills and employability, supporting the commitments at the heart of the recently launched Birmingham Youth Promise.

The landscape for arts, education and local authority funding has changed a great deal and A Creative Future III considers this in the partnership approach being taken to developing the strategy and to the important next step of establishing of a cross sector action plan for delivery .

A series of six priorities have been drawn up with a set of commitments expressed within each, these form a pledge for which we are seeking citywide sign-up.  We will be working closely with our partners to ensure that the picture of city wide provision effectively delivers against these priorities for every young person in the city.

Why your views matter

We are consulting in order to seek your views on the draft Creative Futures III cultural strategy for children and young people. The outcomes of the consultation will inform the final document before it is taken forward for approval and adoption by Birmingham City Council.

Please click on Creative Future 3 draft strategy for consultation.docx in 'Related Documents' below and fill out our survey below.

What happens next

Results of this consultation will be fed into A Creative Future 3 strategy which will be launched to the public early in 2015.