It’s the launch day of the first Festival of London Youth Arts (FLYA), and Anne Engel has just come from a ‘drum jam’, where a group of young people experimented with different drum styles. Later that day the Channel 4 cinemas screened a series of seven short films made by various youth arts groups across London. In the middle of the hectic schedule, Engel, Director of the London Youth Arts Network, takes time out to talk about the festival and discuss why youth arts needs to be recognised and supported by the community.
‘Mostly, the image of youth in London is negative,’ says Engel, but she adds, the festival aims to challenge these misconceptions. ‘It’s very much a question of turning that around. For young people themselves, it’s about seeing the results of their own hard work and determination.’
FLYA is a combination of specially commissioned works and existing youth arts initiatives promoted under the FLYA umbrella.
The festival happens outside formal education with over 70 events across the arts spectrum in more than 30 venues around London, centred around four hubs of creativity: The Albany in Lewisham; Stratford Circus, Newham; the Weekend Arts College and The Roundhouse in Camden and Oval House Theatre in Lambeth.
The hubs, located in particular areas of deprivation with large estates, have been instrumental in bringing the festival together, according to Engel.
‘The centres have people working there who have been working with young people for a long time, they are very experienced and also know how to market events,’ she says.
Two years ago, the London Youth Arts Network (LYAN) was established with a view, Engel says, to highlighting and promoting youth arts activities through the vehicle of an arts festival.
Although there were similar festivals during the days of the Greater London Council, following its demise 16 years ago Engel says there is now little local infrastructure to support youth arts initiatives. However, LYAN hopes to promote change in this area.
Prior to the festival’s launch on Monday, a conference last Friday organised by LYAN brought together over 100 people in key policy and decision-making roles to discuss ideas on what could in the future constitute relevant local youth arts strategies.
‘We have a situation in London where every borough has to submit a cultural plan by the end of this year and many of these plans don’t mention youth arts,’ Engel explains, ‘so our objective was to get the boroughs to write in and safeguard youth arts in their strategies – I think we’re going to see quite a positive result from that conference.’
One of Engel’s concerns is, while money is currently spent largely on preventative youth arts projects, it could be just as well spent nurturing young peoples’ creativity.
‘An awful lot of youth art funding at the moment is sadly tied up with prevention. The money is there to stop young people taking drugs, stop them committing crime, stop them getting pregnant and we have very mixed feelings about youth arts being funded in this way because, I think it’s quite insulting to young people – they have a right to participate in arts activities,’ says Engel.
In the current climate, it’s difficult to project the positive side to London’s youth culture when the media continues to focus largely on the negatives. It’s been a tumultuous year for London’s youth community, particularly when it comes to crime. From late January through February and March, the nation’s media embarked on a frenzied campaign reporting the increase in crime, particularly focusing on escalating youth crime rates brought to the public’s attention through the proliferation of mobile phone thefts.
In light of concerns regarding crime, it’s clear funding is crucial to promote preventative initiatives, but engaging young people in arts projects can also function as a deterrent from harmful activities.
‘It’s about developing creativity,’ Engel emphasises, ‘this is accepted generally, but in regards to youth arts developing creativity is the key to developing young people, developing their career opportunities and developing young people as social beings.’
According to Engel, LYAN would like to see ongoing funding that isn’t necessarily tied to specific events but which can be applied to continuing informal, learning arts-based activities for young people. Although funding exists to a degree, she concedes, it is fragile and fragmented.
The goal, Engel says, is to establish a strategy so eventually people will be aware of what ‘youth arts’ is about.
‘Everybody knows what you mean when you say ‘Arts-in- Education,’ but informal youth arts is pretty much an unknown quantity as far as the general public is concerned.’
‘We want the general public to know more about youth arts, we want the funding and the policy makers to be a lot clearer about what the needs are, and we want young people to know more about what’s on in their patch and to get a sense of the whole of London and what’s on on their doorstep – we put in a lot of effort at this festival to encourage young people to visit events in boroughs other than their own.’
Engel adds future FLYA events, at this stage planned biennially, hope to establish international projects for London’s youth to collaborate with.
‘It’s terribly important that the world at large begins to see the positive contribution young people can make, to see their creativity, their joy, the results of their hard work and determination.’
FLYA runs until this Saturday, October 26. For further information on events, visit the website: www.flya.co.uk
For more information on London Youth Arts Network visit www.youthartslondon.co.uk
Director of London Youth Arts Network, Anne Engel, would like to invite interested parties willing to establish international partnerships for the next FLYA festival to contact LYAN. Email Anne Engel
