We are thrilled to share with you the Final Evaluation Report undertaken by Chrissie Tiller Associates in December 2019.
Extract from EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
CREUS was a programme, funded within the European Union Erasmus + programme, KA2 Cooperation for Innovation and the Exchange of Good Practices, looking into innovative ways for disadvantaged and NEET young people (aged 16-24) to develop transferable, and transversal, competences through engagement with non-formal, cultural and artistic learning.
Guided by one driving question, ‘In which ways can peer mentoring using creative practices in unconventional places be said to contribute to the social inclusion of vulnerable young people?’, partners undertook a programme of action research to explore ways in which they might create a methodology based upon four pillar or leading principles:
- the use of the arts, culture and creative practice to engage with excluded young people through nonformal practice
- the notion of 'space' as a learning environment, and how 'unconventional' spaces offer innovative and
novel places for non-formal creative learning;
- the specific contribution of peer mentors in non-formal creative learning
- the transversal competences of the European Reference Framework for Lifelong Learning (ERF).
From the on-the-ground experience of developing a peer mentoring programme within less conventional
spaces and places which resulted, a curriculum and a shared approach to learning began to emerge. The
diverse needs of the different partner countries, and the different stages at which non-formal learning through creative approaches has been developed in each country, meant the programme was not without its challenges. But this is a common theme within many EU projects, and the sharing of experience this provokes can be also be a rich and important source of intercultural and trans-national learning. The time constraints of any project like this, were also an issue when many of the young people the partners were working with required time to learn to trust and begin to gain confidence in their own ability to be creative themselves and encourage it in others.