Gateshead Restorative Justice Programme
[Gateshead] 2009 onwards
Working with Gateshead Youth Offending Team to deliver a participatory arts programme to enable young people to undertake creative activity which benefits the local community.
The core aims are to:
- Make young people in the youth justice system feel the consequences of their actions through a structured community reparation scheme;
- Provide products for the use/tangible benefits to people in Gateshead;
- Enable personal development of the participants' confidence, self esteem, communication, negotiation and team working skills;
- Enable the participants to develop new skills, interests and broaden their horizons by helping them to build relationships with people they would not otherwise meet and visit venues they would not otherwise attend.
The project will achieve these aims by:
- Undertaking a process of artist led consultation with Gateshead Youth Offending Team staff, young people accessing the programme and members of the community to develop a sustainable approach to restorative justice activities;
- Providing a motivating 20 week programme of high quality arts activities for participants;
- Providing participants with the experience of working alongside professional creative practitioners;
- Producing high quality creative product(s) to be installed and publicised in the local community based on outcomes from the consultation process and workshops;
- Supporting participants to attend local cultural venues and events.
Gateshead City Council Neighbourhood Management Team (East) commissioned the group to develop a series of artworks for a large underpass forming part of the wider regeneration of the old Dilley Line wagon way. Artists Dan Civico, Tommy Anderson and Lindsay Duncanson worked with the young people on the restorative justice programme, pupils from local schools, and women at a local community centre to create a series of large-scale artworks that are now on permanent display in the underpass.
During 2010/11 Dan Civico continued to work with high-risk young people to design and develop a series of information boards exploring the heritage and environment of the Dilley Line area, due to be installed in the Autumn of 2011.
