Future Festivals: Making the most of performative techniques.

This workshop was headed by Jacqui Mulville from the Cardiff Osteological Research Group in the School of History, Archaeology and Religion. Firstly, details of past events were given; one particularly interesting venture was the Future Animals Project which attended the Green Man festival. This project set out to engage the public at this festival through many different interactive means, the theme they chose was ‘Back to the future’.

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Building a community heritage project from scratch

The Caerau and Ely Rediscovering Heritage Project (or CAER Heritage project) was introduced during this workshop by giving us a chance to do some archaeological discovery and analysis for ourselves, albeit only with replicas. The exercise split us into groups with a list of categories which would help us try to identify the object, its possible use and the historical period it may have come from, and included items such as axe heads and shaving utensils.

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Working with Young People in Barnardo’s Cymru

For universities, working with disadvantaged young people in the community is less of a one-way street than you would think in terms of knowledge sharing. That is what Dr Richard Knapp and his students at Swansea Metropolitan University discovered when they launched the ‘Teen Talk Back’ project, a collaboration between children’s charity Barnardo’s and the university’s performing arts and education departments.

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Experiences of young people’s climate change forum

The Beacon for Wales Climate Change Project, headed up by Cardiff University, has been taking its hands-on educational workshop to the young people of Wales, to gain a better insight into their understanding of and attitude towards climate change. The workshop focuses on the issue of adaptation, and encourages young people to think about how both environmental policy and their own individual lifestyle can affect the environment.

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Engaging Young People

Kim Madden and Juping Yu from the University of Glamorgan shared their experiences from two Beacon for Wales funded research projects which aimed to engage specifically with young people. The first project was an online based discussion carried out over a three week period with a view to ascertain the ideas, opinions and feelings about some health related topics of 13 people aged between 16-19. The second project was more direct and interactive, aiming to engage with and encourage young people to have fun with science with a specific focus on genetics.

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Discovering Development Together: A Case Study in Citizen Science

In order to be of benefit to the large majority of the population, science often first requires the co-operation of a few willing volunteers, most particularly psychological studies. But rather than being a burden on someone’s time, how can scientists make it so that the subjects of their studies get something out of the process too? That is exactly the challenge Dr Merideth Gattis and her colleagues at the Cardiff University Developmental Psychology department have been facing head-on.

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Engaging with ‘Hard to Reach’ Groups

This workshop was led by Alain Thomas from Participatory Cymru. The aim of this workshop was to promote public engagement with those ‘hard to reach’ groups by identifying possible barriers in order to find solutions.

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Building Creative Citizens

This workshop was given by Dr Rea Dennis, a senior lecturer at The University of Glamorgan. The workshop showcased the methodology behind the highly successful Beacon for Wales project ‘Reclaiming the shrew’ that Dr Dennis ran two years ago alongside Gemma Fraser Jones, an accomplished dance artist from the Valleyskids Artworks programme. The project took vulnerable young people from the South Wales Valley communities, and taught them innovative techniques in physical theatre, before letting them perform a final piece in front of their family, friends, and fellow community members.

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StoryWorks: The Value of Using Real Life Stories

Three years ago Karen Lewis from the University of Glamorgan teamed up with Maria Boffey from The Fostering Network and, with funding from Beacon for Wales, set up StoryWorks, which uses stories from real people across all walks of life with a view to effect change. One of the most successful works they have produced is ‘Men Who Care’, a booklet which emerged after a 3 day workshop in which male foster carers would share their stories and experiences of being a Carer with each other.

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