DUETT - (Directing Urban Energies to Townsend)

The context for the co-creation DUETT project is the Ulster Orchestra (UO) base at Townsend Street (TS) Belfast which straddles the interface between two culturally and politically different communities. Sitting as it does next to a Peace Gate and equidistant between the Falls and the Shankill Roads the positioning of TS buildings leaves the UO vulnerable to anti-social street behaviours which can emanate from the collision of these two cultures. The deprived condition of the area exacerbates the feeling of disenfranchisement for young people in the area although there is evidence that some of the street violence is being orchestrated by outside influences. The irony is that the two sets of young people experience identical levels of deprivation. The NI Assembly data for West Belfast constituency ward, where TS is situated, indicates that it has the highest percentage of teenage mothers in NI, lowest life expectancy, highest number of unemployed, highest levels of crime and anti-social behaviour and, most pertinent to this proposal, the lowest level of GCSE and ‘A’ level successes compared to all NI school leavers. It also has the highest percentage of young people with a statement of educational need. The challenge this project addresses is how to access the creative lives of young people in their known environments in order to introduce them to new forms of culture and cultural expression which can impact on the high levels of anti-social behaviour both the general locality and the UO base experience on a regular basis. The aims and objectives of the project are: to use the everyday lived experience of the young people to facilitate their move into new forms of symbolic creativity to give them safe and supported access to venues and performance forms they have not experienced or feel actively prevented from engaging with to use the future-world building methodologies developed by the World Building Institute in Los Angeles to encourage them to create new possible futures for themselves to co-create a delivery model which could become the exemplar for future similar projects in other disenfranchised areas of Northern Ireland. Building on community work already undertaken by both the Ulster Orchestra and Ulster University this project will have a number of applications and benefits: It will, if successful, have a profound impact on the topology of the geographical area, lessening the possibility of anti-social behaviour while creating new avenues for creative output Build a foundation on which the university can build future interventions with a view to encouraging some of the young people to consider re-entering education in a formal setting The project will have a direct influence on governmental policy as the Department for Communities (which funds the UO) is in the process of framing a new strategy for Heritage, Culture and Creativity which will be informed by the learnings taken from this project The methodologies and evaluation will be published hence advancing knowledge and understanding in the field of community studies and creativity-led community intervention.