BECOME IT: How We're Adapting To Change
Graphic reads: Become It Goes Virtual and shows screenshots of people on a Zoom call
Here’s an update from Eli and Euella, from Rising's core team, on our Engagement work and how we've been adapting to change in light of COVID-19
For those of you who don't know, BECOME IT is our Engagement and Artist Development Programme. It was conceived as a programme of holistic personal and professional development for young creatives, involving monthly meet-ups (‘The Network’), workshops (‘Training’) and ongoing mentoring opportunities and has officially been running since January. Our first three in-person sessions were a huge success and have enabled us to offer more opportunities for our community to connect with each other, troubleshoot ideas and feed directly into Rising's future offers.
It’s important to us that during the pandemic our community stays connected, so we’ve put frameworks in place to ensure BECOME IT can continue. We have taken sessions online, using Google Hangout and Zoom to run two sessions so far, and we are developing video resources for our YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjpNDhsL4edlTBXPqrF_kKA) to help our community stay creative. We've been paying members of our community to run online sessions, sharing their knowledge and expertise as well. We recognise that this is a particularly difficult time for everyone and we're trying to be as flexible, supportive and available as possible.
Now, more than ever, young people need mentorship. When the lockdown began we put out an appeal to our mentors, asking if any of them would be up for mentoring a young person during this time. We were overwhelmed with the responses we got with mentors volunteering their time to supporting young people who need it. We have been making mentoring matches over the past few weeks via phone and video call and have ensured that our email contacts are circulated for anyone who wants to get in touch or needs support.
Although things have been moving swiftly online it hasn't come without it's challenges. The strength of Rising's community has grown out of our physical events, labs and workshops. We, as a community, work best when we come together in one space to creatively problem-solve or talk through our problems. With everyone in lock-down we're all having to up our screen time just to maintain personal connections and get stuff done - but this is not healthy or sustainable and people are being left behind.
We recognise the barriers that operating online puts on some people who may not have access to a functioning laptop/phone, internet connection with a strong bandwidth or space away from family where they can connect in peace. We've also been desperately trying to do some more targeted engagement work - focused around getting into communities of young people without provision or access to the creative industries but, with the lockdown, that work has had to be put on hold, or, at the very least, rethought.
We're just trying to take one day at a time. The whole team have been amazing and we hope that we can continue to support in any way we can while trying to navigate such uncertainty.
That's it for now. In the meantime, STAY RISING.
Photos of all Rising team members. Text reads: we're still here
To read more about Rising's response to COVID-19, read our statement, here.
To find out which BECOME IT sessions we are running next, follow us on social media or check out our Eventbrite page.