Find your talent

In May 2008 it was announced that Tower Hamlets was one of only ten nationwide areas (and the only one in London) selected to take part in an exciting new Government programme called “Find your talent”.

The aim of this programme is to trial ways of giving all young people aged 0-19 access to a broad range of creative and cultural activity for up to five hours a week, in and out of school.

What do we want to achieve?

Over the next three years we want to use the programme to do the following:

show how young people access five hours of arts and cultural activities a week through National Curriculum provision, creative curriculum planning, extended schools activities and/or out of school activities
significantly increase the uptake of cultural/arts offerings by families with their children
improve the English literacy and language skills of parents and families through the cultural offer overcoming language barriers to access
promote community cohesion and get more people moving around and outside of the borough
build on the existing arts and cultural offer in the borough to ensure that it meets the needs and aspirations of our young people and community
ensure a more strategic, joined-up and informed approach to the commissioning of arts and cultural activity within the borough
define quality arts and cultural activities through the collaborative development of quality criteria (i.e. what would a ‘contributing hour’ look like)
determine how young people can effectively drive the development of a cultural programme

Consultation

To ensure that the FYT project is driven by the needs of the local community we spent the first few months of the project consulting with young people and their families about what our priorities should be. You can read the results of this consultation here (pdf).

Case studies

Following the consultation, we commissioned a range of programmes and projects to test new models of practice and delivery in key areas that had been identified as requiring additional focus. You can view a snapshot of some of this work by downloading our Find Your Talent Year 1 Case Studies Booklet (358kb) here. The projects highlighted here will inform our planning over the next two years of the programme.

How to contact us

Please contact the Find Your Talent team on findyourtalent@towerhamlets.gov.uk

Further information