Hi all and welcome aboard!
BIGTIME TAKEOVER is aimed at empowering young people to use their creativity and the potential of technology in positive ways that give them a voice in issues that affect their lives. It is based on applying the concept of a digital site “takeover” – where the users of a communications site monopolise that site to curate and promote their own message and creative content. It will use the Takeover model as a basis for engaging young people in devising their own Creative Action Projects – ie: projects that deploy and develop imaginative creative skills to create positive social change and to benefit the wider community. In the context of high levels of youth unemployment and predicted to rise dramatically in the wake of the COVID-19 virus, such projects, enabled and facilitated by professional Youth Arts Educators, offer young people a route to develop creative solutions to issues that affect their lives, engage productively with stakeholders in their communities, develop active citizenship and deepen political, social and civic participation.
BIGTIME TAKEOVER will harness the capacities of evolving new digital technologies as a tool for transnational transfer and exchange of these models led by the young people themselves. Starting with projects aimed at making a positive change in their environment at a local level, it will incorporate increasing stages of transnational collaboration as young people gain confidence in taking over the power to direct their own expression, which will give them an edge as they prepare to enter a competitive labour market or progress into education and training.
The project partnership consists of 6 youth arts providers in 5 European countries: Italy, UK, Cyprus, Poland and North Macedonia. Five have extensive experience and history of collaborating together on Erasmus Plus. The sixth partner from North Macedonia is a long established Youth Arts Cultural Centre with extensive experience of European and international artistic collaborations but new to Erasmus Plus, and therefore the project facilitates an important knowledge transfer element. The project targets young people at risk of social and cultural exclusion including refugees and migrants. It also addresses the needs of Creative Arts Educators, who play a key role in fostering young people’s creative skills acknowledging the impact of this crisis on Youth Arts Mentors by incorporating a module addressing wellbeing and mindfulness.
The project will create the following results from the Intellectual Outputs:
IO1: Youth Arts Educators Toolkit to enhance the transferability of Creative Arts Actions that foster young people’s empowerment and civic participation. The target users are Youth Arts Educators who support young people who face barriers of exclusion and disadvantage to develop confidence and motivation through creative expression.
IO2: A Youth Powerpack designed and co-created by young people as a mechanism through which learning is transferred and expressed from local Creative Arts Projects in each country.
IO3: The BigTime Takeover Digital Platform an online vehicle for young people’s transnational collaboration and a showcase for the BigTime Takeover, through which creative content generated by the project will be publicly shared and available, and which will continue as a legacy of the project, disseminating the Arts Actions and as a platform for future collaborations.
All these results will be hosted on a new transnational online communications platform, through which all the learning resources and creative content generated by the project will be publicly shared and available.
The project will generate the following additional results in terms of participation:
– 100 young people participate directly in local Creative Action Projects;
– 36 young people participate in BigTime Takeover;
– 12 young people and 6 youth arts mentors attend 5 day transnational blended mobility event;
– 5,000 visitors use the digital communication tools, platforms and social media;
– 150 attenders at 6 Multiplier Events in 5 partner countries;
– 10 Youth Arts Mentors participate in transnational peer-to-peer mentoring and achieve accreditation of their competences at EQF Level 4;
– At least 60 % of young people participating will be female, addressing gender disparity in the field of digital technology.
The combined results will create a package of digitally accessible learning resources, which can be used in formal and non-formal youth arts and education settings and will be widely disseminated through social media, supporting young people to find their creative voice, make new connections and collaborate with different stakeholders across national boundaries to make a difference to issues that affect their lives.
