Salisbury Arts Centre is committed to developing opportunities for young people to engage with the arts in a meaningful and sustained way.

It is early days but it is beginning to do so by recognising its strengths and assets and seeking to make the most of them.

The Arts Centre shares a city with Salisbury Playhouse of course, who run their immensely successful Stage 65 Youth Theatre, so it is important that the Arts Centre’s offer to young people is distinctive, diverse and complementary to theirs, rather like its core programme I hope!

The Arts Centre building is an old, deconsecrated church and in years gone by used to be a real hub for young people attending and playing in music gigs in cold, grungy and basic surroundings.

Since its extensive refurbishment and reopening five years ago it has become a much more … well… pleasant and comfortable place to be, heated, well decorated and kept beautifully clean and tidy! We still programme those youth rock gigs but, of course you can no longer smoke inside and we now have professional security and stringent age checks on alcohol purchase and consumption. So perhaps, from a young person’s perspective, “pleasant and comfortable “equals “boring and intimidating”.

So a year ago the Arts Centre embarked on a mission to find new ways to open up the building once again to that 14 to 19 year old age group that is so elusive and yet so important to the future success and vibrancy of arts organisations.

What follows is an update of progress so far on an ongoing journey which extends across the entire next three years too (young people feature large in our new 2010-2013 business plan).

Last spring the Arts Centre restructured its staff in order to carve out a new role of Outreach Coordinator with a particular emphasis on engaging with young people both in and outside formal education.

One of Megan Purdie’s first tasks in post was to deliver a free young people’s open day which had been planned as a springboard to the Arts Centre’s focus on this group of people and because it would be a challenge! She did this by first establishing a group of young people as consultants who have become known as the Arts Centre’s “Creative Panel”.

Together the Creative Panel and the Arts Centre delivered “Yes No Maybe” (the Creative Panel’s name for the open day which described how they felt young people like them respond to offers made to them!). It was fantastically successful with 400 people engaging with a range of tasters, activities and performances throughout the afternoon and evening of 3rd October 2009 both inside and outside the Arts Centre. Key to its success was the use of texting as a viral means of marketing and communicating before, during and after the day as well as the draw of Simon Bird from The Inbetweeners as the headliner in the evening of course!

As a result of Yes No Maybe the Arts Centre has been able to launch a number of initiatives through which young people are now participating in regular weekly activities in the building and beginning to reconnect with the space as one into which they are welcome.

Salisbury Youth Dance Company was successfully piloted in the autumn and launched fully in January this year. It is full to bursting and has a waiting list already keen for the next round of auditions in September! Only three months old, this fledgling young company has already showcased its work three times including at the regional U dance platform in Bristol which was accessed by competitive application from across the South West and where they then went on to finish third on a day where standards were incredibly high.

Film Makers Anonymous are up and filming with support from Bath’s Suited and Booted and the Arts Centre has big plans for this company of young film makers as it develops plans to upgrade its Media Space and offer open access and drop in sessions for young people to engage with creative digital media in an informal and friendly way.

The Hood has also launched this spring as the youth arm of our company in residence, Hoodwink Theatre, and specifically exploring the whole design led process of creating visual theatre experiences with an emphasis on outdoor performance.

The Arts Centre has also rebranded its music gigs for young people, now called Any Louder? , with advice from a ‘street team’ of young people which it has established to help market these events.

As you can see the Arts Centre has been busy!  However, this is just the start.

The strategy going forward is to recognise the value and potential of the talent and expertise that pours through the building every year and harness it for the benefit of these new young companies and others like them.

As a small scale, multi arts, receiving house where most performances are ‘one nighters’,professional companies and artists come through the doors at a rate of knots. The aim is to slow this down so that more of them stay and engage with local Wiltshire young people while they are here. This is how we have set out with Salisbury Youth Dance Company for example where, in their short life, they have already worked with Yorke Dance Project, Stan Won’t Dance, ACE Dance and Music and Rosie Kay and performed curtain raisers before performances by two of these companies.

There is no reason why this cannot extend across art forms and become a natural part of our contractual relationship with a growing percentage of our professional programme, increasingly chosen for its ability to engage with this target group as well as having a wider appeal.

In addition the Arts Centre hopes to extend what it calls its “Creative Family” by actively seeking appropriate residency relationships with more local companies with the right skill set and by beginning an Associate Company scheme which will allow us to explore the full range of possibilities with regular companies presenting at the Arts Centre.

In my experience, through previous action research projects, there is no doubt that extended and sustained relationships between young people and professional companies and artists lead to significant improvements in the quality of work produced and the understanding of the realities of the industry.

Both these outcomes are critical if we want to ensure that young people come through the food chain towards considering a career in the creative industries with the right head on and if we want to grow a future audience where these very young people will develop into discerning, open minded and returning consumers prepared to take risks and explore new territory.

Deryck Newland

Director, Salisbury Arts Centre