by Kathryn Welford, LeedsCEP & LEEDS 2023 Children & Young People’s Partnership Manager
What is LeedsCEP for? What value does it have and for whom? What are we trying to achieve and how? LeedsCEP is going through a bit of a ‘re-set’ – post-covid, pre-LEEDS 2023, where we get to remind ourselves of why we are here, what we want to achieve and what the journey ahead may look like. Education partnerships and young voices, currently under-represented, are a key focus as we begin to plan ahead.
With LEEDS 2023 Year of Culture just around the corner, we have a real opportunity to come together and put creative and cultural learning centre-stage, to do something big and wonderful. LeedsCEP holds the ideal space to begin to broker those relationships, to realise those ‘wouldn’t it be great if..?’ ideas and solve those ‘what we really need is..’ challenges.
A new School Partnership Seed Commission Open Call from LEEDS 2023 is about nurturing ideas that could be realised as part of 2023’s creative education programme. The focus is on bringing different partners, from across different sectors, together with schools, colleges or other education providers, to explore an idea that excites them and that they haven’t had opportunity to do before.
LeedsCEP is in the perfect place to broker these links, to support the development of these ideas. Anyone with a spark of an idea that they feel may fit the LEEDS 2023 brief should contact LEEDS 2023 to see how the LCEP can support it, and how we can broker those partnerships.
As a partnership we have recently come together (in a real space!) to recalibrate and redefine our way forward post-covid. External facilitator, Charlotte Mead, led a session where members began to define the purpose of LeedsCEP, what we wanted to achieve and how the structure of the LCEP could best support that. A follow-up session in January will focus on members planning clear deliverables against our priorities. Education partners are key to this process, as are young people and our focus will be on broadening our engagement to include these voices.
LEEDS 2023 will be an amazing year for children and young people, but it can also be a catalyst for a more joined-up relationship between education and the cultural sector. LeedsCEP is key to this partnership approach. If we use this time to build effective and inspiring partnerships, to model a way of working together which has real value for members – teachers, senior leaders, young people, artists, creatives – then LeedsCEP will be here, and thriving, way beyond 2023.
