College One: Last Option Talk & Decision time...

Start

Start which is based in Salford is a creative arts and well-being centre that has the age ranges of 5 up to 95, which is a large age range. The members they have, have been diagnosed with some sort of mental health ranging from mild to moderate, from stress to bi-polar to schizophrenia. Doctors and even the job centre can prescribe this activity as a way of medication, this has been happening for the past 8-9 years. 

Studies have shown that 1 in 4 people will experience mental health of some sort. Start also has a Youth Arts Project scheme that acts as an early intervention for people considered to be involved in high risk situations. High risk situations include parents suffering from mental health issues themselves or family generations that have not attended higher education. 

The members are not considered to be a diagnostic but potential artists. No staff there but one are doctors, they are from different creative backgrounds. 

Start encourage their members confidence in creating something and the members become satisfied with what they've made. They have 5 certain disciplines:

• horticulture, land design within gardens
• visual arts such as print-making and painting
• crafts which include wood, ceramics and jewellary
• photography including digital suites for Photoshop
• textiles, machine and hand-stitch as well as other techniques such as knit and crochet.

Start have a lot of freelance artists that would come in a present workshops to give the members new things to learn and use. Most new members would be given a 2 hour taster session for 6 months as a starter and see if it works for them. Start Creative generates income for the charity by selling some of the work that the members create. It provides opportunities for people who have gone through the system and need a confidence boost. They sell some stuff at the Lowry but also John Lewis has made an order and they are doing really well, members also trade on the Christmas markets.

• Connect
• Be active
• Take notice
• Keep learning
• Give

There are 300-350 members and this number fluctuates on a weekly basis as do the 150 volunteers. For this opportunity I would be acting as a studio assistant. Some members would have a personalisation fund that differs for each member. This wold be a great opportunity to engage with a range of different people.

Decision making...     

I now have to choose which opportunity and work experience I would like to do. I get 2 choices and have to put a number 1 or 2 next to that choice in order of preference. My first choice is the Secondary High School because I think I would benefit the most from it. In the future I would like to have teaching as some sort of career in any form so I have taken this chance to test out whether Secondary children would suit me. I know it was said that year 12 would be who I'd be working with but they also said they want me to gain as much out of it as possible so I am going to ask if I can spend as little as a day working with maybe year 7 students as well to see the difference and see which age group I work with best. I would also like to work shadow as teacher as well as a couple of students. I would love to be given this chance as work that I have seen produced from this school has been amazing and I look forward to learning from them as well as hopefully teaching them something. 

If not my second choice is Z-arts. I choose Z-arts as my other choice because I am always fascinated with Installations and public specific work and this would fit the criteria of this. I have always wanted to produce 3-d pieces but because I consider myself to be a printer, my work always returns to be flat and the Z-arts brief is to design something that would brighten up a certain space in the Z-arts centre, so I could definitely make it 3-d and installation specific which would be exciting to do. I think I would be happy with either option and no matter which one I get I know I will benefit from it. I find out what I'll be doing for my Unit X project tomorrow...