MADE is 1 (and a bit)!

MADE Director and CEO of Z-arts, Liz O’Neill, introduces the partnership and celebrates our first 16 months.

Students from Loreto High School get creative at the Manchester art gallery as part of a MADE project.

Launched in March 2020, a week before the first national lockdown, we’ve made significant progress towards our core aim — to bring arts and culture to every young person in Manchester, and to help teachers to enrich their lessons with a creative curriculum.

This is primarily due to the passion and drive of the 15 schools and 23 cultural organisations who make up the core partnership, which has been even more applaudable given the pandemic pressures they have been under.

With 27 participation projects launched, hundreds of local young people engaged, a name change and a full re-brand, it’s been a big year!

Pupils at St. Wilfrid’s Primary enjoy our launch week.

How are we MADE up?

MADE consists of 4 different task groups, each following a different thematic strand. Task groups create education resources linking to their theme and connect culture to education groups for participation activity.

Task group activity is driven by a Working Group comprising of the co-chairs (Education & Culture) from the 5 different task groups, plus a Steering Group which includes representatives from the Head Teachers Network and Deputy Leader of Manchester City Council.

MADE also has a Communications group, comprising of Press Officers and Marketing Managers from Manchester cultural organisations.

Variant designs for our new logo.

Why ‘MADE’?

Formerly the Manchester Cultural Education Partnership, we’ve rebranded this month as ‘MADE’. But why ‘MADE’? MADE fits us. It’s what we want all young people to say who are a part of our projects: “I made art”, “I made progress”, “I made plans”, “I made friends”.

It also connects to the creative process behind all great art. Nothing just appears. It’s made. There’s testing, play and risk and we want to create spaces and environments that encourage this. We want young people to get things MADE.

What have we MADE this year?

Task Group 1: Creative Curriculum

The Creative Curriculum task group infuses creativity across the subjects of the National Curriculum. Despite the pandemic, the group have achieved great things:

• 13 partnerships have been established between schools and cultural organisations in Manchester.
• Activity has included workshops in school, cultural venues and online via Zoom.
• 13 sets of digital resources have been created from the partnerships and are available for teachers to explore on our new website. Subjects covered range from Poetry to PSHE to Dance, and themes have included Black Lives Matter, Mancunian heroes and local nature, amongst others.

Task Group 2: Employability

The Employability task group focuses on promoting the creative careers that exist in Manchester. Despite the pandemic, they’ve had a great first year:

• 6 partnerships have been established between schools and cultural organisations.
• The partnerships resulted in Q&A sessions — both in school and via Zoom — between Manchester pupils and local creative professionals.
• 14 video interviews with local creative professionals have been produced in collaboration with filmmaker Josh Wilkinson, under Josh’s CHATTIN’ brand. Each video, along with a worksheet for pupils, is now available to view on the MADE website and shines a spotlight on a different pathway for young creatives.
• Launched for Careers Week, 2021, the videos have been viewed by thousands of young pupils across multiple digital channels.

A student from the Manchester Deaf Centre creates art as part of one our projects.

Task group 3: Youth Voice

MADE has 2 youth panels (our ‘Creative Influencers’). Group 1 has members aged 10–14 and group 2 has members aged 15–21. This year, the groups have been busy:

• A Creative Facilitator has been working with both groups to produce creative projects driven by their interests and passions.
• Group 1 are delivering a collaboration with our partners at 42nd Street called ‘Be You-nique. This will be a creative workshop producing textiles, flags and fashion celebrating identity and mental health.
• Group 2 are creating a tool kit to help other young people to feel confident in cultural venues, post-pandemic.
• The groups have also informed wider MADE activity, including the renaming of the partnership.

Artwork produced in response to Unlock Your Imagination.

Unlock Your Imagination

When the country went into a third lockdown in January, the pressure was back on educators and parents to keep their young people learning from home. To support them, MADE launched Unlock Your Imagination — a series of films featuring fun arts challenges, developed by some of Manchester’s leading cultural organisations.

7 cultural partners produced challenges: Manchester Art Gallery, MIF, Z arts, Band on the Wall, The Whitworth, Manchester Museum and the National Football Museum. Hundreds of pupils took on the challenges, producing amazing work, and shared their creations on social media. The videos can be viewed on our website with teachers now using the challenges with their pupils in the classroom.

Holiday Activity Programme

Over Easter half term, MADE supported MCC to deliver creative enrichment activity in 3 local schools/community groups, running 5 events.

• Story Drawing Club helped pupils at Button Lane Primary to create storybooks.
• Young Identity worked with 2 groups at HideOut youth centre on poetry activities.
• Tom Barry and Flick Goodman visited Bridgelea PRU to engage pupils with drama.

We’ll continue to support the new programme into the Summer and beyond, bringing creativity to young people outside of school hours.

What’s next?

Our newest task group will focus on producing cultural and creative activity with pupils who have English as an Additional Language. Currently, the group is developing its first pilot project, set for delivery in the Autumn term.

We’ve also issued a call-out through our channels for a brand new task group. This group will focus on creating experiences that help pupils in Manchester to understand the diversity across the city, and appreciate the traditions, identity and histories of the varied communities that call the city ‘home’.

Finally, of course, we have a brand new website which gives us a platform to celebrate and present our work, whilst highlighting opportunities for young people and foregrounding their unique perspectives and voice.

Despite the restrictions of Covid, we’ve had a brilliant first year.
The next one promises to be even better.