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Pledge 2 -
Also see the Pledge Web Report
Students in their traditional costume
In June we launch Pledge 2, continuing the refugee-based work in eight Kent schools to develop understanding, critical thinking and reflection about refugees, asylum seekers and migrants. Each school is allocated an artist who, over four sessions, will work together in creative learning techniques, music and visual and performed arts toward making their pledge. The pledge is up to the students to design and put into practice and can be small, such as a change in the classroom, or something broader within their hometown. The schools come together after these four sessions to showcase their pledges to each other and to share their understanding of the key issues intrinsic to the project.
The final stage is a reflection workshop, where each artist revisits their participating school to allow the students to discuss the impact of their creative work on themselves and the effectiveness of their pledge on their communities. There will also be an evaluation of the common understanding of the circumstances facing asylum seekers and refugees.
The Pledge project is being run by Music for Change in conjunction with Find Your Talent. The project sees Music for Change artists Alex, Téa, H. Patten and Kev and Dan team up with visual artists, a costume designer, and a dancer from Find Your Talent to work with secondary school students in Shepway.
The project is about the young people making pledges towards a positive change in attitudes, understanding and behaviour in the community towards the issues surrounding asylum seekers, immigration and refugees. The project began by both the artists and students participating in a fact and fiction session run by Migrant Helpline - a charity which provides relief for asylum seekers, refugees and migrants who are in distress. Then followed four weeks of workshops where the artists and students worked together to explore the pledges they could make and how to express these creatively. The project culminated in a sharing event at Folkestone's Quarterhouse where the students shared what they had been doing and made their pledges.
The artists re-visited the students in January 2010 to reflect upon whether the pledges had been kept and whethe
r they had made an impact in the students' communities.