British, Spanish & African links

Circomedia, Bristol
One of the Contented team, a former project coordinator at Circomedia in Bristol, argues: I think that work to engage young people is work done for the sustainability agenda in many ways, whatever the apparent focus. For example, Circomedia works with young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, building self esteem and health through circus skills. It also works with behavioural units from schools with young people who present very challenging behaviour. Imagine the feeling of getting a group of young people with ADD who can't focus at all, to the point where they can have a go at flying trapeze! The amount of information they have had to take on board for this to be safe is incredible.

We also worked with young adults in rehab, or with mental health problems. I think you could call this a zero-waste strategy – let no lives be wasted, and no potential undiscovered.

These days I have had more hands on experience organising work with young people in Spain. Here are a couple of examples:

I was Project Officer for a visit by a group of young Muslim women from Bradford who came to Andalusia to carry out a photographic project on Islamic Art and Architecture, as well as to meet other youth groups and see a bit of Spain.

I was Project Manager for a piece of work that was funded by the EU's Kaleidoscope project, organising a group of young people in Barbate, Spain who worked for a couple of weeks exploring and developing an artistic response to their future in the EU with some local artists. At the same time a group was doing something similar in Bradford and in Ireland. The Barbate group came up with a poster, an exhibition and a contribution to a CD ROM. I also translated for a visit by a group of artists and youth workers from Bradford who came over to work with them for part of the time. The project lasted about 6 weeks.

As part of our work at Communication (the cooperative language school we founded in Andalusia) we organised an annual visit to a farm school a couple of hours inland from Barbate, which is a fishing town. We worked on issues related to the countryside and the environment in the English classes in the weeks before and after the visit, which was a weekend spent doing outdoor activities and environmental workshops.

I was in Andalusia a couple of weeks ago and facilitated a one day workshop based on Joanna Macy's work, which proved very popular. Nearly 50 people came, and one of the results was an invitation to explore taking this work into Andalusian secondary schools as part of the 'Semana Cultural' that they hold every term – a great opening!