A new social inclusion project from the people who bring you ABCtales.com
Talecatching is an opportunity for volunteers with an interest in creative writing and using their experience and skills to enable others to tell their stories.
Talecatching projects are being developed across north London boroughs.
Any queries should be addressed to:
Mark Brown
Talecatching
ABCtales.com
5 Stucley Place
London
NW1 8NS
020 7209 2607
Hard copies of this information are available online here:
http://www.socialspider.com/talecatching/further_info.pdf
Please forward this pack to anyone you think might be interested.
Talecatching is taking place with pilot funding from Arts Council England and in partnership with Collage Arts.
Contents
- What is Talecatching?
- What kind of people will become Talecatchers?
- Who will Talecatchers work with?
- What will Talecatchers do?
- What skills will I need?
- How much time will I need to commit?
- What will I get out of Talecatching?
- What's the background to Talecatching?
- What do I do next?
Further information:
What is Talecatching?
Talecatching is a programme that trains l volunteers in creative mentoring skills, methods of encouraging and progressing individual's creative writing and ways of encouraging and refining individuals internet and computer knowledge and abilities. These skills are used to enable and assist socially excluded people to develop their creative writing and creative expression, producing writing that represents them and the world as they see it which can be placed onto the www.ABCtales.com website where it can be read and commented on by thousands of other members of the www.ABCtales.com online community. The volunteers, known as Talecatchers, provide 'what's next' suggestions and guidance, helping those involved in Talecatching to access services and opportunities in their community, their area and on the internet. Talecatching provides an opportunity for both volunteers and people who are socially excluded to make new acquaintances and widen their network of associates and friends, building community and providing lasting benefits.
What kind of people will become Talecatchers?
Talecatchers are the kind of people who are interested in writing and interested in helping other people to find out that more things are possible and achievable than they realise.
Who will Talecatchers work with?
Talecatchers will work with socially excluded people. Social exclusion is both very simple and very complicated. A person who is socially excluded can't take part in things that the majority of other people in society take for granted. Lack of money, or lack of a place to live are obvious examples, but being in a wheel chair can socially exclude you if you really want to go to a gig and you can't get up the stairs, or prejudice can exclude you if, for instance, as a person who has recently claimed asylum, people in your street won't talk to you. There are thousands of examples where lacking something that majority of other people have can exclude you from what everyone else has or does.
Social exclusion is something that prevents you from accessing opportunities. If you've grown up around people who have successfully accessed opportunities, you will have a knowledge of what is possible in life and, almost as importantly you will have the connections you have with these people to use to your advantage. If you grow up in an environment where most people around you are socially excluded, you don't get to see what is possible and you don't get to meet people that might be able to help you on your way.
What will Talecatchers do?
Talecatching will put together people who've found their way in life a bit, people who have experience and knowledge and who want to share that knowledge, with people who, for whatever reason, might not be able to access opportunities in the way that others do. The job of a Talecatcher is to get people to write and tell their stories in whatever way they wish, allowing them to claim their own voice in the way that people who are successful in life have claimed theirs.
Through this process the Talecatcher will also help people to join the ABCtales community so that they can find out what it's like to be part of an online community and also what a useful thing the internet can be if you know your way around it. They'll also be able to prove to people that there isn't much difference between someone who does something, such as writing or poetry, and themselves. Once you know someone who has done something, whether it's publishing a best selling novel or organising a tenants' committee, you realise that it's something that someone like you could do as well.
That's empowerment, helping people to realise that they can do things. Talecatching will help people to find their voices and find that things that seem impossible and 'not something that someone like me could do' are in fact very much possible.
The way that we look at is 'once you've found your voice, you'll never need anyone to speak for you again'.
What skills will I need?
All that you'll need is some experience in creative writing and a belief in using your experiences and abilities to enable others. We will provide high quality training, so that as a Talecatcher you will be able to:
- Use good listening skills including understanding the process of getting to know someone, learning their strengths, weaknesses, hopes, aspirations and experiences
- Relate, be supportive and non- judgemental
- Inspire people to realise their potential and to move forward
- Show confidence in giving practical advice based on own experience and knowledge
- Identify your own relevant skills and knowledge and communicate these skills and knowledge to enable and encourage
- Be aware of ways of recognising potential
- Be aware of the possibilities and limitations of the role of Talecatchers as creative mentors and of the Talecatching relationship
- Be confident about the development of a creative mentoring relationship
- Have knowledge of 'next steps', both creative and non-creative and awareness of specialist help and services if necessary
- Use techniques to encourage, enable and develop creative writing, including exercises
- Have a good knowledge of the possibilities of internet usage and relevant internet skills and information
- Be confident in use of basic computer functions such as word processing and email
- Have a good understanding of the aims, objectives and ethos of Talecatching
You will be supported by us at all times, and will work as part of a team of other volunteers. A senior Talecatcher will be on hand to make sure that you don't feel unsure of what you're doing and that you feel able to work at your best, and will always be on hand for a chat or to sort out any problems.
We are committed to providing you with training that will let you use your experience, skills and ideas to provide greatest impact. We believe that helping you to develop is the best way to help you to help others to develop.
How much time will I need to commit?
Training will take place over one weekend. Weekly Talecatching sessions will last up to three hours. Expenses will be paid.
What will I get out of Talecatching?
Aside from training that will allow you to be an effective Talecatcher, we will provide you with a Talecatchers Toolkit that will provide useful information and guidance such as writing exercises, useful phone numbers and information about resources and organisations that will be helpful in Talecatching.
The ethos of development, enablement and recognition of potential within Talecatching is as strong for Talecatchers as for the people taking part. We will do everything that we can to help you develop and get closer to achieving what you would like to achieve.
Talecatching is flexible and will hopefully grow and evolve with the people involved in it. Volunteers and people taking part will have equal say in how the project will evolve and will have the opportunity to be involved in the development of what will eventually grow into a national programme.
Involvement in Talecatching will provide an excellent grounding in community arts and will provide an excellent stepping-stone into work in that field.
It will also give everyone involved an chance to meet new people and find new opportunities, building stronger communities and finding new friends.
What's the background to Talecatching?
In September 2003, Mark Brown, Editor of www.ABCtales.com and David Floyd, future Senior Talecatcher, began work on a feasibility study for Talecatching, an idea that had been kicking around www.ABCtales.com since it's conception. Receiving funding from Arts Council England, Mark and David devised a way of bringing together creative writing, mentoring, promoting social inclusion and increasing internet usage.
As part of the feasibility study, David looked at ways in which Talecatching could work in different and contrasting areas. One of these areas was the London Borough of Haringey.
In August 2004, www.ABCtales.com received notification of Arts Council England funding to carry out a pilot study to test Talecatching 'in the field'. Based on a strong existing relationship with Haringey based arts organisation Collage Arts, it was decided the pilot should take place in Haringey in partnership with Collage Arts.
What do I do next?
Talecatching will be recruiting Talecatchers in the near future and is extremely happy to discuss any aspect of the project. Any queries should be addressed to:
Mark Brown
Talecatching
ABCtales.com
5 Stucley Place
London
NW1 8NS
Please drop us an email at:
If there is anything you would like to discuss, or any questions arising from what you have read, please don't hesitate to contact Mark Brown at markbrown@abctales.com or on 020 7209 2607 during office hours.
If you know someone who might be interested in being a Talecatcher, or who may be interested in bringing Talecatching to their organisation or group, please forward them this document or get them to contact Mark Brown as above.
What follows are extracts from the Talecatching Feasibility Study, completed with funding from Arts Council England in December 2003. They should clarify any issues not made clear in the rest of this pack. Full copies of the Feasibility Study are available on request.
What Is Social Exclusion?
Social exclusion is a difficult concept to define. Prime Minister Tony Blair described social exclusion in the following terms:
"Social Exclusion is about income but it's about much more. It's about prospects and networks and life chances. It's a very modern problem, and one that is more harmful to the individual, more damaging to self esteem, more corrosive for society as a whole, more likely to be passed down from generation to generation than material poverty.
Stockwell Park School, Lambeth, December 1997
A further definition of social exclusion that forms the basis for the thinking behind Talecatching comes from the work of Tania Burchardt, Julian Le Grand and David Piachaud of the Economic and Social Research Council Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE) at London School of Economics and Political Science.
According to their definition:
"An individual is socially excluded if (a) he or she is geographically resident in a society, (b) he or she cannot participate in the normal activities of citizens in that society, and (c) he or she would like to so participate, but is prevented from doing so by factors beyond his or her control
There is broad agreement that arts and cultural activity can combat social exclusion. Policy Action Team 10, in its report to the Social exclusion Unit of the UK government states that this is because:
"they [arts and cultural activities] appeal directly to individuals' interests and develop their potential and self confidence; relate to community identity and encourage collective effort; help build positive links with the wider community and are associated with rapidly growing industries.
Talecatching is designed to promote the three main categories of benefit recognised as arising from arts and cultural activity:
- Personal development
- Social cohesion
- Active citizenship
What is Talecatching?
The four main objectives of Talecatching are:
- To encourage, motivate and enable individuals and groups to produce pieces of writing that represent them
- To place these pieces of writing in a place and format where the wider public can read them.
- To encourage individuals and groups to access the internet by giving them a reason to do so by their joining of an already existing community.
- To generate social capital through the process of the above three objectives.
Talecatching will use volunteers from the wider community as 'Talecatchers' to enable socially excluded individuals to produce bodies of writing that represent them. The Talecatchers will also work with participants to enable them to place their writing onto the www.ABCtales.com website, support them in the use of email and introduce them to the internet and/or guide them in using the internet to their best advantage. This will be delivered through regular, weekly sessions, where the Talecatchers and participants produce written work, discuss relevant targets and aspects of the writing process and access the internet, including email and the www.ABCtales.com website. The Talecatching relationship will involve elements of mentoring. The Talecatchers and participants will meet within the context of a larger group. This will enable exchange of knowledge, experiences and the building of relationships between Talecatchers and participants.
The Talecatching Model
Talecatching targets groups of people that are socially excluded by our definition of that term. Rather than simply viewing people as excluded from arts or literature activity, a traditional failing of inclusive arts projects, Talecatching addresses their exclusion from the wider fabric of society.
- Encouraging, motivating and enabling individuals and groups to produce pieces of writing that represent them.
Social exclusion is a situation where an individual or group of people find themselves in a position where they are not party to or involved in the major processes and benefits of the society in which they live. The result of produces a world that runs parallel to the world of those who are not socially excluded, where the socially excluded individual or group cannot access any of the benefits of the wider community but also cannot access the means by which other socially included groups represent themselves and their interests in that wider community. Talecatching is a means by which people who have found themselves to be socially excluded can produce a body of written work that will represent the world as they see it, embodying the issues that they find important, gain new skills, make new relationships and find new opportunities.
- Place these pieces of writing in a place and format where the wider public can read them.
www.ABCtales.com is the biggest creative writing website in Europe. It is already a massive resource of stories and poems submitted by members of the public which they have complete control of, and which can be read by anyone with access to the internet. The initial outlet for the writing produced by Talecatching will be the www.ABCtales.com website. This, we reason, has the advantage of providing instant access to work produced by any participants in the Talecatching project, this access being possible from anywhere in the world, at any time, by anyone who so chooses. This coupled with any other more traditional outlets, such as performance or print, gives the Talecatching participant the unique opportunity to 'speak' to anyone across the wider community, as long as they have access to a computer with a connection to the internet.
- Encouraging individuals and groups to access the internet by giving them a reason to do so by their joining of an already existing community.
While ninety-six percent of UK residents can, in theory, access to the Internet in at least two out of four places: home, work, school or at a public library, only fifty nine percent take advantage of that access on a regular basis . This is most often because the individual cannot see any benefit or usefulness to internet usage. Most initiatives have found it difficult to produce the result of continued, sustained internet usage amongst people who have previously had no interest in accessing the internet. Talecatching will encourage and motivate participants to access the internet by firstly helping to dispel any fear or lack of skills and secondly providing a reason to regularly access the internet.
One of the problems of increasing internet usage lies in the area of network effects. To use Damian Tambini's analogy:
"A single telephone call is worthless if there is no one to call. But as each new telephone is added to the system, the value of each increases, until telephones become indispensable .
Someone who is accessing the internet on a regular basis for the first time will find a similar situation. Email is an excellent and exceedingly cheap way of maintaining relationships with others but is usually unrewarding unless you have an already existing group of people with which to correspond.
Of the many positive aspects of www.ABCtales.com, most valued by its existing users is the ability to contact others, via email, to discuss the work they have placed on the website and in turn to be contacted by others about their own work. Joining an online community such as www.ABCtales.com represents a real benefit, it represents an already existing network of correspondents ready to engage in email conversation about work on the website. This provides the participant with the opportunity to interact online with people from all across the country and potentially all across the world, and gives a reason to sustain that correspondence.
- Generating human and social capital through the process of the above three objectives.
Another factor closely involved in social exclusion within communities is lack of human and social capital.
Human capital relates to skills, confidence and abilities at an individual level. Social capital relates to the inter-relationships between people and the informal structures that these form. It is often true that socially excluded people suffer a lack of social capital in their community. They lack the kinds of informal extended networks that socially included people use to leverage advantage for themselves. Talecatching will build social capital by providing the situation where lasting structures of relationships can be formed., both within the excluded community and between the excluded community and the wider community in which it is embedded.
Talecatching will also encourage and enable the volunteer Talecatchers to develop their own writing through the process of working in collaboration with Talecatching participants. Talecatching will provide these volunteers with skills that they can carry beyond Talecatching into future arts projects. Talecatching will enrich and further the work and abilities of non-professional writers, increasing their potential for future community arts work and ultimately improving their chances of securing paid work in this field.
Four subsidiary objectives of the Talecatching programme are:
- To extend the experience of volunteers through their work with participants
- To improve volunteers' own writing through the enabling of others
- To develop the skills of volunteers through training, enabling them to lead and engage in participatory arts projects in the future
- To support those volunteers in their work with advice, organisation, development and supervision.
