Tony Vinson’s Report Dropping off the Edge has identified Warrawong and Berkeley in the Illawarra as being among the most disadvantaged postcodes in NSW. Berkeley placed third on the list of communities in NSW experiencing reoccurring hardship and has a youth unemployment rate of between 22% and 35%.
Breaking Borders will deliver arts intervention workshops to re-engage young people from these communities, who are at risk, living in public housing estates, in non stable accommodation or are homeless. These young people are long term, intergenerational welfare payment recipients (Centrelink), often recidivist, present with issues of alcohol and other drug misuse and mental illness. The project will:
- Deliver arts intervention workshops with a core group of participants (primary) building arts based skills, products and self efficacy.
- Deliver arts intervention workshops with a much larger group of participants (secondary) using the primary group as peer mentors and workshop (arts) facilitators.
- Produce public outcomes of their work, showcase and celebrate in the community.
- Create a larger artistic/community outcome (‘Hip-Hop Musical’) with participants and present performances across the community.
- Present the work in local schools.
Through an intensive program of workshops, the core team of young people will work alongside professional artists, building skills in arts practice and building a sense of connection to community.
The core group of young people will create a body of work/production to be performed at a local skate park, involving the stories of young people (non indigenous, TSI, Maori and Aboriginal) living on the south coast.
Workshops delivered over the twelve months, including rap, Hip-Hop dance and traditional dance styles, combined with circus acts, graffiti art and skateboarding, will provide the ‘contemporary’ communication tools, enabling these young people to tell their stories, support their peers and make positive contributions to community. Breaking Borders will focus on issues of social inclusion.
Throughout the course of the project the core group of young people, who are building skills in arts workshop facilitation and peer to peer mentoring, will take their skills and newly acquired leadership abilities out into the community. With the Breaking Borders workshop facilitators the primary participants will run similar arts intervention workshops for other young people (secondary participants) in the community. These will be conducted in community spaces, such as the public housing estates, vacant shop fronts, youth centres bringing profile to the project and process.
A more compact version of the final production will also be work-shopped into a piece that can be taken into schools with the use of portable skate ramps from local council. This will raise the profile of the project to reach a different demographic within the community.
The involvement of community support workers, including alcohol, and other drug workers and mental health workers (Headspace partner) in the workshops, will provide young people with the support needed to access the resources available from the these services. The aim of the agency involvement is to facilitate the building of relationships with participants in the hope to begin the journey of transforming their current circumstances.
Intended beneficiaries of the Project
- 25 primary beneficiaries (core group) who will be trained as workshops facilitators and peer mentors.
- 200 secondary beneficiaries involved as participants in community workshops.
- 500 young people through school performances of the final product.
- 1000 community people reached through community performances and positive media stories about the project and young people’s involvement.
Breaking Borders aims to:
- Increase participant skills to deal with personal crisis and social isolation;
- Increase participant skills to deal with drug and alcohol misuse and other anti-social behaviours;
- Improve participant access to and awareness of support services;
- Increase skills development for leadership participation;
- Develop new leadership skills;
- Strengthen cultural identity, self efficacy and social inclusion;
- Increase collaboration between support services; and create sustainable arts processes and support to deliver BE processes locally.
