University of Brighton in Hastings – The Bridge Community Centre

Three words to describe your project: Inclusive | collaborative |innovative

The aim of the project is to enable a group of young people to become more integrated within their own community by showcasing the Adventure Playground in Ore.

The Bridge Project in Hastings forms part of a much bigger integration programme for socially excluded young people aged 11-15. The project planned by The Bridge Community Centre and University of Brighton in Hastings will involve engaging young people in organising and delivering a themed summer event for July 2012. This event will be aimed at younger children from local primary schools (Key Stage 2) and take place in the newly developed Adventure Playground in Ore Valley. It will consist of a range of play and craft activities, music and a story-telling event, all of which will be organised by the young people currently using The Bridge. Work here will be supported by play-scheme workers at The Bridge, as well as partners and student volunteers from the University of Brighton in Hastings. The Bridge Community Centre in Ore Valley, Hastings, is situated in one of the most economically deprived wards in the UK. Staff working at the centre have identified a number of urgent educational needs amongst the young people who use its facilities. The Office of National Statistics provides evidence for the fact that a significant number of young people at The Bridge Community Centre have difficulty learning in mainstream schools, or a traditional classroom environment. The Adventure Playground is an excellent local resource, but it is currently under utilised. Targeting the event at a number of primary schools will attract lots of people from the surrounding areas, thereby raising public awareness about the Adventure Playground. This, it is hoped, will increase its use by local residents. Work undertaken for the event will provide a focus and purpose for the young people at The Bridge. The intention here is to maximise the potential for educational attainment via community-based learning. Here, research into the wider context of community-based learning and its possible benefits, will be undertaken by an undergraduate currently studying education on the Joint Honours Programme in Hastings. The Bridge Community Centre is currently situated between several neighbourhoods where there have been issues around territorial conflicts amongst young people. Work at The Bridge has gone a long way to increasing understanding, respect and tolerance in the local community. The project aims to cement this work, particularly in its emphasis on drawing significant numbers of people from surrounding areas to the Adventure Playground for a summer festival. Targeting the local primary schools will lay down a valuable nexus of relationships and networks between The Bridge, local schools and the University of Brighton in Hastings.

Plans for our event in the Adventure Playground are developing apace. The young people from Hastings Academy are planning and contributing ideas that will be of interest to children from the local primary schools. A date has been set for Friday 6 July and schools from the locality have been invited. Meanwhile, research into community and alternative learning is being carried out by Dr Deborah Madden and Debra Huleat (student research assistant). We've already managed to cover much of the secondary contextual research and have embarked on the empirical primary data - interviews and questionnaires are taking place next week. Thankfully, we can also avail of the expertise of Professor Yvonne Hillier, who has kindly agreed to cast a critical eye over our findings when we have a first draft. The idea is to present our findings first at the Hastings Research Seminar Series, with a view to publishing them in article or report form.

An unexpected bonus has been the discovery that one of the Trustee for the Bridge is someone who has completed an MPhil in education research at the University of Brighton. This person has been very valuable in terms of giving advice, expertise and mentoring to the student research assistant, particularly as he has worked in education and has been Head Teacher at a local primary school for many years before recently retiring. This is an excellent example of collaborative learning and sharing of knowledge and best practice in the community".

Please contact Deborah Madden [D.Madden2@brighton.ac.uk] for more information.

Project Evaluation attached