Cohesion Counts

Bringing Communities Together Through Creative Arts

This is a Cohesion Counts overview of the project.
Click here for the project leader’s report.

Background
Project Aims
Project Objectives
What the Project Did
Did it Work?
Recommendations

Background

The location of this project was Falinge, Rochdale, a densely packed estate of low rise social housing and one of the most deprived areas in the country. Seventy five different languages are spoken and turnover is high. Channel 4’s Secret Millionaire has visited the area, and there had been articles in local, regional and national Newspapers with the headlines “Falinge – Sicknote capital” (MEN, Dec 08), “The Shameless Capital of Britain” (Daily Express, Mar 08).

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Project aims

We invited tenders from a number of drama and arts groups with the following aims written into the brief:

1. The creation of a positive opportunity for interaction through an arts or drama project to help to break down barriers between different age, ethnic or social groups and to promote valuing diversity.
2. To help create a sense of belonging.
3. To leave something in place when the project ends. For example, a drama or music group which continues to meet after the project is completed. It could be music, drama, dance or arts based or all four.
4. To develop innovative, high impact creative and engaging messages around community cohesion and hate crime.
5. To be enjoyable and fun – people must have a desire to take part.
6. It should engage with a minimum of 15 – 20 participants.

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Project Objectives

In addition, in common with the other intervention projects the project had five overarching objectives:

1. To improve residents’ satisfaction with the neighbourhood in which they live.
2. To improve residents’ sense of belonging to their street, neighbourhood and Borough.
3. To improve residents’ perceptions of living in communities mixed by age, tenure, property types, areas of the neighbourhood and social and ethnic backgrounds.
4. To improve relationships within neighbourhoods between residents mixed by age, tenure, property types and areas as well as social and ethnic backgrounds.
5. To encourage residents to build relationships with people from different backgrounds through meeting and talking in a variety of places

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What the Project Did

We selected Spiral Dance to deliver the project, who were already engaged in running a dance and drama based project in other areas of Rochdale entitled “Folkways”: The project was intended for families, children, young people and older people. The aim of the project was to engage different generations by working together on a creative arts project to help them understand more about the community where they live. The project also aimed to attract different ethnicities.

In a series of workshops the Folkways project questions explored the following questions through a range of creative arts methods:

I was…I am…I will…
For me, home is…
I wish….
For me, friends are…
For me, free time is…
I need you when…
Questions I have never asked…
For me, family is…
Things I have lost…

Phase One- August 2009
Taster Workshops – 4 open workshops each with a variety of art forms.

Phase Two- September- December 2009
Choreography and Production – 13 workshops to form an intergenerational performance group working with dance, drama and physical theatre.

Phase Three- December 2009
Performance – Celebration event bringing together all participants involved in the Folkways project from across the Rochdale Borough including the Falinge Group.

The open taster workshops were attended well for the first two, with low numbers for the second two. At these there was also a good mix of ages and ethnicities. The sustained group from September was attended by children and young people aged 3-18yrs, again with a good mix of ethnicities, and some parental involvement.

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Did it Work?

York Consulting’s evaluation of this project noted that the Spiral Dance performance had a big impact on the young people and adults involved. All were proud of their achievements. Individuals were particularly proud that they had performed in public, remembered their roles and improvised during the show.

There was limited evidence to suggest that the project contributed to improved levels of local area satisfaction. However, there was an increase in feelings of belonging to their street and to the Borough of Rochdale.

Additional evidence from the evaluation highlighted that residents get frustrated by the number of short term projects which are constantly run in the Falinge area, including this one, and in fact the number of other projects running in the area meant that there was competition between projects to engage residents. The support of community workers was crucial in boosting attendance at sessions, door knocking to personally invite residents.

All participants were in agreement that it was possible for people with different backgrounds, ages, ethnicities and residences to get along. The greatest increase was seen for those from a different ethnic background, with an increase to 77% from 50%. However, between pre and post evaluation there was a reduction in the amount of young people who agreed that older and younger people and people from different areas of Rochdale could get along and were welcome.

One of the project’s main aims was to raise awareness of hate crime and help break down barriers affecting different social groups. Activity of this nature is sensitive to deliver, as if done incorrectly it can stir up issues which can make matters worse. Spiral Dance approached hate crime by linking it with the wider contentious issue which the young people were aware of – knife crime, its causes and impacts and using a story explored through the different art forms. Feedback on what they had learned showed that this had a positive impact on participants, encouraging them to think more widely about major issues.

Overall, the impact of the project was positive and it met the objectives within the brief (although the issue of hate crime was not tackled overtly). The medium of creative arts was also shown to have potential in promoting cohesion and breaking down barriers. Discussions at the steering group towards the end of the project indicated that the project may be able to continue once funding is in place, and needs to happen in order to have any lasting impact. Any future activity would also need to more successfully engage a wider age range of participants.

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Recommendations

1. Although this project was tendered to a prepared brief, we felt that what was delivered was something that had been planned previously rather than being designed specifically to address our objectives. More thorough investigation at the start of the project might have alerted us to this. The initial interview, inception meeting and steering group were designed to keep the project on track, but overall we felt that the hate crime issue, which was one of our key objectives, was only tackled obliquely.
2. The support of community workers was crucial to keeping up attendances although the 10 a.m. start was crucial in keeping up, as was other competing activities running at the same time.
3. The project would need to continue in order to have lasting impact.
4. Our overall observations and the evaluation showed that dance, drama and other creative art forms can be a powerful, enriching and enjoyable community cohesion tool.

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