With support from this Partnership a range of activities have been run across the city, all of which have had very different modes of delivery- but all focused on work with young people disengaged from mainstream provision. The work aimed to assist young people in re-accessing education, employment and training by focusing on providing core skills support to particular groups. Although the developments and participating groups have been diverse there are a number of outcomes that are common to all the schemes. All the projects helped to enhance literacy, numeracy and communication skills, enabling them to be developed- in a creative and innovative- way in an informal environment- where young people do not always realise that they are learning. Another common outcome from these initiatives is the increase- in confidence and self-esteem- gained by many of the participants.

The emphasis of one project was to enable the young people to access the world of politics through increasing their communication skills.

In the Gallery 37 scheme, over 140 young people work on different arts programmes as apprentices in partnership with leading arts organisations in a ‘tented city’ in Centenary Square in the centre of the city. All receive accredited training in art and design, and can get support for their core skills needs. Last summer 78% of the participants went on to further training/education and 8% gained employment.

In a related set of developments, voluntary sector organisations that work directly with disaffected young people have been able to access- resources; training in the use of ICT to support basic skills; staff awareness re. basic skills; staff qualifications to assess and deliver basic skills work with young people.

These basic skills developments with young people sit well alongside our development of homework support in libraries; our support for young people- as readers and writers; our support for the range of learning gateways and processes to bridge young people from school to employability.