Our Strategy: 2025-2030
By upholding our values of agency, sustainability, empathy and equity, we can shape responsible, caring individuals and communities.
Agency
We trust each other to think creatively and make decisions. When we make mistakes, we learn from them.
Sustainability
We understand that to flourish creatively, we need long-term programmes and progression opportunities.
Empathy
Our differences can connect us when we engage in curiosity and empathy.
Equity*
To strive towards equity, we recognise each other’s intersectionality**. We nurture critical thinking and offer a space to slow down, reflect and heal.
*Intersectionality: A term coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw. The ways in which systems of inequality based on gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, class and other forms of discrimination “intersect” to create unique dynamics and effects (Centre for Intersectional Justice USA).
** The term “equity” refers to fairness and justice and is distinguished from equality. Equality means providing the same to all, equity means recognizing that we do not all start from the same place and must acknowledge and make adjustments to imbalances.
Our Approach - Creative Learning
The overarching and integrated approach to cultivating our values and achieving our purpose is creative learning. We define creative learning as an holistic experience that invites social and emotional; cognitive and behavioural change over time. It shapes how we relate to ourselves, others and the environment; how we think and how we act. We specialise in and utilise the arts as a framework to encourage and enhance creative learning, while developing creative and technical skills in unison. A set of ‘characteristics’ have been identified and developed over time to describe what happens when creative learning is successful and they are used as the basis for planning and evaluation.
Research
Underpinning all creative learning practice at AEE is an overarching, driving research question that seeks to focus internal evaluation and guide research that reveals new knowledge and understanding in our specific context, within the broader landscape of community, arts dedication and creative learning. Closely linked to our organisation’s purpose, we ask:
What are the conditions under which young people can reconnect to their creative potential?
The Problem and Context
Since 2017, Arts Education Exchange has been established in Thanet, South East Kent, as a provider of high quality creative learning opportunities for local young people. The participants of this music programme will be 130 young people aged 11-25 from the Thanet area who have faced significant adverse life circumstances and barriers. This includes young people living in poverty, LGBTQ+ youth, those experiencing exclusion from mainstream education, homelessness, those in the care system or having left care, those struggling with mental ill health, not in education, employment or training (NEET), those with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), as well those at risk of offending.
We also work with a number of young people with an Educational Health Care Plan (EHCP). We specialise in working with young people experiencing complex social, emotional and mental health difficulties (SEMH), often with a comorbidity of developmental diagnosis (eg ADHD, ASD) who are not suited to traditional schooling. To best support them and manage challenges that might arise, we work closely with the young person, parents or carers, the named school and professional networks, to develop bespoke objectives and support their individual learning strengths, building on their interests to foster a love for learning. Our team is highly experienced and includes qualified teachers, SEMH specialists and an art psychotherapist.
Thanet continues to rank as the most deprived local authority in Kent (IMD, 2019) and 46.2% of children live in poverty in Cliftonville West, against a Kent average of 18.3% (Source: End Child Poverty Coalition). For context, youth services have been slashed across the county, disadvantaged families and young people are bearing the brunt of the cost of living crisis, and a local independent special school has been forced to close this year due to lack of funds (the Lighthouse School). Youth unemployment is soaring. We are an essential service and a life-line!
We live in the ruins of capitalism - a racist, ableist, individualist, patriarchy. Our social structures have weakened over time in the name of profit and maintaining the status quo. Brexit and Austerity are key political missions leading to the a) persistent reduction in public funding b) increased cost of living and c) social and cultural unrest. Our systems of public support have buckled under the pressure of COVID 19 and the climate emergency, feuling a rise in anxiety and inequality. As a result, many young people experience poor mental health; stressful home lives; their educational needs not being met and a lack of employment opportunities. These extractive factors persistently and disproportionately impact low income and minoritised communities and cultivate systems of trauma. A lack of space for imagination and the devaluing of creativity throughout these stages secure the reproduction of systems and prevent real change happening.
Our focus over the next five years
AEE maintains a commitment to listening and responding to the communities we serve.
As highlighted in our group analysis of the ‘problem’, we are experiencing seismic economic, social, ecological and political changes in all aspects of life. We therefore need to adapt how we operate, paying attention to what young people need and how we can develop our organisation accordingly in order to uphold the quality of what we do and sustain it through the challenges we are facing. Primarily an alternative education and creative opportunities provider, we have recognised the need to adapt our role and areas of work to include health, families and advocacy. These areas form an holistic and systemic approach to working with the individual in the context and collective they are situated in.
Education
AEE is a pioneer of creative and alternative provision
Advocacy
AEE partners with young people to amplify their ideas, vision and ambitions
Organisation
AEE develops sustainable, purpose driven systems, policies and practices to continually improve the organisations impact
Creative Opportunities
AEE maps and resources creative journeys with young people, in and beyond AEE
Mental Health and Wellbeing
AEE centres the wellbeing of young people and staff
Timeline