Download as PDF: Engaging young people in regeneration and community development

Since 2005, Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council and its partners have been successfully tackling some entrenched social and economic problems on the Tibbington Estate. With support from the Safer, Stronger Communities Fund, they have created a new programme of activity designed to combat deep-rooted attitudes to work and worklessness. As part of this programme, the Council were keen to find innovative ways to engage with young people. This case study explores how the Council worked with partners to develop a new technology-based approach to involving young people in the redesign of an open space in the middle of the estate. This approach is now being adapted to enable young people to get involved in the master planning process and, at the same time, to develop new skills which it is hoped will help them access employment in the future.

The issue

Over many years, quality of life on the Tibbington Estate in Sandwell has been severely hampered by an ‘inward-looking’ culture characterised by low aspirations, worklessness and benefit dependency, which was being perpetuated across the generations. Since 2005, supported by money from the Safer, Stronger Communities Fund, Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council and its partners have been successfully tackling these problems through a new programme aimed at both young people and their families. The programme comprises a range of activities designed to challenge entrenched attitudes and support skills development and educational attainment, including:

• Educational support for young people in years 10 and 11, through school-based mentoring
• Youth work aimed at broadening young people’s experiences and raising their aspirations
• Intensive support for parents and families
• A range of activities to help local people into employment
• A ‘Local Base’ (community room and offices) and,
• Community development activities designed to increase the capacity of local communities to participate in decision-making.

As part of this programme, the Council were keen to find new, innovative, and successful ways to engage with young people and involve them in the regeneration of their Estate. This case study explores how the Council developed a new technology-based approach to involving young people in the redesign of an open space in the middle of the Tibbington. The Council are now building on this experience to design an engagement process for involving young people in the Master Planning process.

What they did

Gaming the Tibby

Through Midlands Architecture and the Designed Environment (MADE), Sandwell’s Safer and Stronger Communities Programme Manager established contact with Digital Native Academy (DNA), an interactive media company interested in serious gaming. The three partners decided to work together to pilot an innovative approach to engaging young people in regeneration activities on the Tibbington.

Supported by a small amount of Arts Council funding, accessed via MADE’s Creative Communities Programme, DNA developed an accurate and interactive, virtual 3D map of the heart of the Tibbington Estate using existing computer games technology and Ordnance Survey data. Tools embedded in the programme allowed users to illustrate their own ideas for developing the open space in the middle of the estate. The programme was kept deliberately simple, so that it could run easily on lap top computers.

Partners involved in the Safer, Stronger Communities programme asked for volunteer facilitators to help take the programme, Gaming the Tibby, out to residents on the Estate. Several residents expressed interest in acting as facilitators for the game and one resident, with strong technology skills, volunteered to act as the lead facilitator, coordinating the implementation of the project on the ground. Facilitators also included mentors from the local secondary school, Alexandra High, who were already working with young people from the Tibbington Estate, and Connexions staff.

DNA provided training to the volunteer facilitators to help them to play the game and teach other residents to use it. Training was offered from two sites: Alexandra High School and the Local Base on the Tibbington Estate. The training was delivered in small bite-size chunks; volunteer facilitators learnt about a particular aspect of the programme and then went out to teach other young people about this.

The Council provided four lap top computers which could be used to play the game in any location: at school, in local community facilities, or in people’s homes. Young people were encouraged to work together in groups to play the game and come up with their own ideas about how the estate’s open space might be re-designed.

Between January and February 08, the seven volunteer facilitators engaged with over 40 young people. Though the initiative was specifically aimed at young people, over time, it also attracted interest from residents of other age groups.

Prizes were awarded for the best ideas developed through Gaming the Tibby and these were presented at a local community event. The best ideas were also featured on a DVD called Tibbington: A Safer and Stronger Community.

The process of putting together Gaming the Tibby was captured in a comic strip designed by the resident coordinator (see excerpts, below). Partners involved in the Safer, Stronger Communities Programme are now considering making a short video of the comic with sound effects and audio supplied by the young people on the Tibbington. The idea is that this is not only attractive on YouTube, but is also fully accessible to the visually impaired.

Game Plan

Those involved in Gaming the Tibby feel the project has been extremely successful. The young people who played the game had a lot of fun and are now fully conversant with the technology. However, Gaming the Tibby wasn’t explicitly designed to up-skill young people and the ideas they came up with for developing the Tibby were not always entirely suitable for the local area – for example they were not necessarily in tune with the design of the rest of the Estate. With a new Master Planning process about to begin (the draft Plan is due in September 2009), the Safer, Stronger Communities Programme Manager saw an opportunity to build on the success of Gaming the Tibby and create a new technology-based tool, which could take engagement with young people to the next level.

Working alongside DNA, Sandwell are devising a new programme called Game Plan, which aims to involve young people in the master planning process and, at the same time, to help them develop a host of new skills. Game Plan comprises a series of specially selected computer programmes, which are designed to help young people to reflect on the types of issues that typically come up in urban design (for example, what infrastructure is needed when planning a new urban centre and where to locate services for the local community).

The project is being funded through the Working Neighbourhoods Fund. Although the games technology used for Gaming the Tibby was proprietary, it was used by DNA on a not-for-profit basis. In order to ensure that Game Plan is cost effective, DNA is doing much of the development work for this new project in-house. Many of the young people who have been involved in Gaming the Tibby have volunteered to act as facilitators for Game Plan, encouraging other residents to take part and helping them to do so.

Game Plan will be delivered in three main stages: the first stage comprises a gentle introduction to gaming technology – providing young people with opportunities to experiment and have fun; the next stage involves a more structured programme of embedded learning; and the final stage introduces young people to the gaming packages that will support the master planning process.

Playing Game Plan will enable young people to learn about the underlying principles behind good urban design and construction. The Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council Programme Manager is exploring how skills developed through Game Plan can be formally accredited, for example through the Open College Network. Her hope is that young people who get involved in Game Plan will be inspired to continue to learn about urban design and construction and will be well placed to take up any future job opportunities that may arise when the Master Plan is eventually translated into action.

Together with DNA, the programme manager is also investigating ways in which the ideas that young people come up with when playing Game Plan can be fed into the master planning process. She is also engaged in conversations with the Council’s Housing department to explore the possibility of using Game Plan to engage young people in other areas of Sandwell covered by the Master Planning process, beyond the Tibbington Estate.

Impact

The impact of and lessons from the Gaming the Tibby project have been documented in a report by ECOTEC Research and Consulting, exploring eGovernment developments affecting disadvantaged groups in a community setting.

All partners involved in the initiative feel that it has been successful in engaging a pool of young people on the Estate who have been previously hard to engage with. Partners involved in Gaming the Tibby also point out that it has helped to change the hearts and minds of professionals – such as architects and planners – who now understand the benefits that can be achieved through the use of serious gaming. In addition, as a result of his participation in Gaming the Tibby, the resident coordinator has been offered work with Skills Link, tutoring IT and music.

The Gaming the Tibby project has been shortlisted for a local award (Shining Stars) and the national Guardian Public Services Awards for Partnership Working.

Next steps/sustainability

Partners involved in the Safer, Stronger Communities Programme hope that Game Plan will be an important next step in developing a cohort of young people on the Tibbington who are engaged with services and interested in helping to regenerate their Estate. Building on the good work that has already been done with young people through the SSCF Programme, they hope that these young people may eventually have the interest and capacity to play a bigger role in deciding what youth provision is needed on the Estate and perhaps even managing some of this for themselves.

Approximately £1 million of Section 106 money has already been found from the Parks Department to help redevelop the ‘Cracker’ – a piece of waste land behind the Estate. It is hoped that this and other money can be used to redevelop the Estate and support community activities and facilities for the whole community, including young people, and that initiatives like Gaming the Tibby and Game Plan can help young people to influence how this money is spent.

Lessons

Partners involved in Gaming the Tibby and Game Plan have identified some important learning points emerging from this work:

• Gaming technology can be an effective mechanism for engaging young people: In the past, it has been difficult for service providers to engage with young people on the Tibbington. All those involved in Gaming the Tibby agree that the use of gaming technology is an effective ‘hook’ to encourage young people to engage. Though some partners expressed initial concerns about the imagery used in the game (the tool used to pick up and place items resembled a futuristic gun), Gaming the Tibby has enabled young people to engage on their own terms, using a medium that is familiar and attractive to them.
• Involving residents as facilitators helps to widen reach: The use of residents as facilitators for Gaming the Tibby has helped to widen participation in the initiative and ensure that those young people who were ‘hardest to reach’ were more likely to get involved. Using facilitators who were close in age to the young people on the Estate was also important in building trust and confidence in the process. Some partners have suggested that with additional time and money, they could have taken steps to involve more school staff at Alexandra High, including ICT coordinators, and integrate Gaming the Tibby into classroom and after school activities to further extend its reach.
• It’s important to move at the right pace: MADE were originally keen for urban designers to work alongside young people on Gaming the Tibby to help shape their ideas and teach them about the principles of good design. However, given the history of young people’s disengagement from service providers, it soon become clear that the main focus needed to be on engaging young people and encouraging them to participate in the first instance. Partners hope that Game Plan will enable them to build on the good links they have established with young people and find opportunities to increase young people’s understanding of design principles through the involvement of other professionals.
• Good partnership working is key to success: One of the reasons that the Gaming the Tibby has been successful is that it has drawn together and harnessed the energy and enthusiasm of a range of partners who each have an interest in the initiative from a particular perspective. MADE were keen to collaborate on a project which involved young people in the regeneration and redesign of their local areas, DNA were keen to further refine and test an interactive, virtual 3D map of a local area they had been developing as an engagement tool, the Council wanted to strengthen engagement with young people on the Tibbington, and Skills Link and Connexions staff were keen to find a way to establish stronger relationships with those young people who were not in education, employment or training. Partners involved in the initiative emphasise that, as with any other multi-agency initiative, it takes time to establish a sound foundation for partnership working, to understand different organisation’s ways of working and cultures and to build trust. Some partners felt that more opportunities to meet regularly and reflect on aims and objectives and share learning would have helped to ensure that maximum value was extracted from the scheme at a local level, and that opportunities to share learning regionally and nationally were fully capitalised upon. Turning ideas into reality: Partners identify that the active involvement of the housing department in the Council will be essential in ensuring that the ideas that young people have come up through Gaming the Tibby and may develop through Game Plan are taken forward and implemented in practice.

Contact

Jackie Bell, Programme Manager, Safer and Stronger Communities
Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council
Adult and Community Services

Telephone: 0121 569 3968