This session is the first training session as part of a four-part training series, supporting cultural organisations to improve their work for care-experienced children and young people. This is a partnership programme with Arts Connect, funded by Arts Council England. These training sessions have been informed by The Mighty Creatives’ award-winning Creative Mentoring programme.

About the Session

Join Emily York, Youth Programme Manager at The Mighty Creatives, and our founding Creative Mentors Wendy Johnson and Claire Parker, to hear more about the common lived experiences of children and young people in the care system.

In attending this session, you will leave with a deeper understanding of:

• The common lived experiences of care-experienced children and young people and definitions of terminology,
• The journeys and systems care-experienced children and young people engage with (from statutory services within the Local Authority to more bespoke and voluntary services),
• How lived-experiences can present in a child/young person’s behaviours, emotions, attitudes and approaches,
• The importance of a trauma-informed and targeted creative approach.

The session will be interactive and will take participants through a series of:

• Interactive Q&A sessions,
• Breakout discussions,
• Videos and audio examples,
• An exploration of case studies inspired by real-life examples.

About the Training Series

The training series (of four training sessions) aims to give participating organisations a better understanding of challenges that children in care face, how we safeguard ourselves and participants as well as how we can apply our vital creative practices to support them more meaningfully.

This session is session one of four. The following training sessions will be taking place on the below dates:

• Tuesday 14th May, 09:00-12:30 – Safeguarding Best Practice.
• Friday 24th May, 13:30-17:00 – Trauma Informed Practice and the Vulnerable Brain.
• Thursday 30th May 09:00-12.30 – Empowering Children and Young People’s Voices.

It’s compulsory for participating organisations to take part in 3 out of the 4 training sessions, with one of these attended being the Safeguarding Best Practice session.

About the project

This training series is part of a pilot project, in partnership with Arts Connect, funded by Arts Council England. It aims to explore and research how Virtual Schools and Cultural Organisations can develop better and more meaningful partnerships to respond to an area of need.

Cultural organisations engaging in the training series will have the opportunity to apply to be part of the project, where organisations will be matched to a Virtual School partner to deliver and exploratory research project, subject to shortlisting and matching.

To find out more about the project, please visit our website here.

If you have any questions, please email Emily.york@themightycreatives.com.