Speak Up Year 2: Highlights from an impactful year

We are celebrating the second year of Speak Up and the impact the programme is having on young people across the country.

Speak Up takes place every week of the academic year, in 56 secondary schools in England. Cross-disciplinary artists work with students and teachers to co-create artwork and develop the skills of young people to share their ideas.

This summer, we saw nine celebration events happen at our Partner Theatres sharing the work created by young people throughout the year. The events showcased a broad range of art, including films and animation, visual art, live theatre performances, contemporary dance, immersive art exhibitions, fashion shows, live podcast recordings, musical theatre, song writing and spoken word.

Read on to find out more about the impact Speak Up is having nationwide.

150 students taking part in Speak Up met at Sunderland Empire to celebrate their work together.

The newly elected North East mayor, Kim McGuinness, attended the event and spoke to the young people about their ideas on mental health, the environment, online safety, career opportunities in Sunderland and the General Election. Kim shared that she was ‘inspired by the music, podcasts and artwork’ that she saw.

Speak Up aims to give a voice to young people who are not always heard. Kim said after the event that she ‘is listening to the young people in Sunderland’ and has pledged that ‘culture will be part of her industrial strategy for the region’.

Watch Kim McGuiness speak about the Speak Up event

Students in Stoke-on-Trent designed their own brand, Collab, which is an umbrella brand with five sub-brands based on topics that matter most to them. The group decided they wanted their brand to first design a range of inclusive hoodies.

The young people created their co-designed logo for Collab working with local illustrator Rebecca Huges and artist Caroline Sherratt.

Launching their brand identity, they chose the local heritage site Middleport Pottery for a photo shoot as this was close to their school and represented an important part of the history of Stoke-on-Trent. Working with local photographer, Clara Lou Photography, the group created a marketing campaign for Collab.

The Collab brands include:

• Unity FC – challenge toxic masculinity in football
• Our Voice – celebrating the power of youth voice
• Muda Modesty – creating accessible modesty wear for young Muslim girls
• Men’s Mental Health – raising awareness on Men’s Mental Health
• Votes 4 All – emphasising the importance of exercising your right to vote

In Year 3 of Speak Up the group will continue to build their brand and plan to launch a football kit for Unity FC as well as create video content for the brands. Speak Up aims to inspire new ways for young people to think, see and bring about change.

In North Devon, students worked with visual artist Beth Barrington to speak up to their school leaders about their homework load. The group created the multimedia piece Wasted Youth which included large-scale artwork, film and a theatre performance. It was developed into an immersive piece recreating the students’ experiences trying to complete the homework set for them, in their various home settings.

The group agreed that homework was beneficial, however for some they had no quiet space to study when they got home, or they had caring responsibilities which made it hard to meet deadlines.

They also included the parts of their lives that they were missing out on due to the heavy workload of homework and shared what they would like to have more time for, such as gardening, cooking, spending time with friends and mindful colouring.

The group performed their piece at The Landmark Theatre, Ilfracombe, to other students taking part in Speak Up. They then performed the piece in school to the Senior Leadership team, including the Head Teacher. Artist Beth said:

The impact of the piece has made a difference to the students and allowed them to voice their ideas to those in power to make change.

Speak Up provided students at the Beacon of Light School with the opportunity to make their own podcast. The group worked with artists Steph Durkin and Alaistair Cummings to record and produce a podcast episode. The students interviewed their principal, Denise Taylor, to find out about her career and vision for The Beacon of Light, a unique alternative provision school in Sunderland.

Speak Up is upskilling students to learn how to write a script, prepare interview questions, host a podcast using professional recording equipment and design a brand to market their podcast.

Who was your hero growing up? Students in Salford created a film called The Return of Body Positivity. Celebrating the heroes in their lives who have helped them grow and become the people they are today. The film was created with artists Malandra Jacks and cinematographer Joshua Wilkinson.

The group were invited to open the National Literacy Trust annual Secondary Conference at The Lowry in July. Some cast members performed a poem they wrote to accompany the film – called My Hero – to 150 educational professionals. The conference asked the question ‘why oracy [is] so important and how [we] can improve young people’s skills before they leave school’.

Speak Up supports young people to build confidence and use the arts to express themselves.

Students from an Outwood Grange Academy in Wakefield were invited to perform at the annual Outwood Grange Academies Trust (OGAT) Student Voice Conference. The focus for the event was championing mental wellbeing and celebrating diversity, which had been chosen by OGAT student voice teams at last year’s conference.

More than 150 students from primary, secondary and Post 16 Outwood academies attended the conference, where they could network with fellow students from other regions. The day was hosted by Leeds United Foundation and held at the Leeds United Stadium, Elland Road.

Working with Speak Up artists Hannah Butterfield and Eilon Morris, the Speak Up group devised a spoken word performance from their co-authored manifesto titled All the Things That I Can Be.

The school has embraced Speak Up with up to 40 students attending the after-school group each week. The manifesto was created to be shared with school leaders to influence change within the education system. Julie Slater, Chief Executive Principal (Secondary) at OGAT, said:

Sir Martyn Oliver (former Chief Executive and Accounting Officer of Outwood Grange Academies Trust and current His Majesty’s Chief Inspector for OFSTED) described the manifesto as ‘powerful’ and said the group were ‘confident and resilient to speak up about their hopes, dreams and fears’ during their performance at the OGAT Senior Leaders Conference in York.

As part of a workshop, 130 Speak Up students planted flowers and seeds in the Speak Up Garden of Identity installation in Wolverhampton.

The young people picked plants which they felt represented their own, unique personality traits. They chose from Gladioli (‘Be bright and colourful’), garlic cloves (‘Feed the society we find ourselves in’), seeds for lambs lettuce (‘We’re team players for the perfect mix salad’), perennials (‘I get knocked down, but I get up again as I regrow every year’) and hyacinth’s (‘We do things a bit differently’).

With their flowers or seeds the students wrote their names and why they resonated with their chosen plant.

On Speak Up, students get to explore any art form they choose. There is creativity in gardening, and we love that through connecting with nature we can discuss what we need as humans to thrive and grow. The garden is currently being looked after by two schools – we’ll share progress of how it blooms!

Four Youth Researchers worked with PhD researcher Alice Little from York St John University to evaluate Speak Up.
The group came up with 3 core questions for their research:

1. In what ways does Speak Up help you to share ideas?
2. To what extent do you think Speak Up encourages positive relationships?
3. How does Speak Up make you believe in yourself? Or not?

The group trialled different methods of evaluation such as building Lego models to represent how students feel about Speak Up, doodle drawings and word descriptions. For themselves, the researchers have described the impact of engaging with research and becoming youth researchers with the following words:

The group presented their findings to an audience of academics at York St John University.

We look forward to the future findings in Year 3 as the Youth Researchers continue their work with the University of Leeds to evaluate the impact of Speak Up.