Horizons Project Success

Since September 2016, Peshkar have been working with Mahdlo Youth Zone’s Alternative Provision department to deliver the Horizons project. This project aims to bring new and exciting digital skills workshops to young people who are at risk of exclusion from formal education. These sessions enable young people to learn something new, experiment with different styles of learning outside the classroom, meet and work with professional artists and investigate potential career paths offered through digital skills.

The young people working on this project take part in 5 or 6 workshops with a variety of Peshkar artists learning about animation, coding and programming, film-making and music production as well as going on a trip to Revolution 96.2’s radio station to learn about radio and make their own programmes.

Three cohorts of young people have passed through this programme alongside an additional cohort who we were able to provide one to one mentoring with at the ‘Gateway Centre’ at Failsworth School to help facilitate their re-entry into mainstream education. As with all Peshkar projects, the young people involved have had the chance to work towards an Arts Award, in the case of the Mahdlo cohorts this was at Bronze level with the Failsworth group working towards Silver. So far six of the young people who took part have been successfully moderated for Bronze, we look forward to passing the final four Bronze and two Silvers in our summer moderation.

The young people have been lucky to work with some fantastic artists from a range of disciplines throughout this project so a big thanks must go to them as well as our friends at Revolution FM, Mahdlo and Failsworth School.

This project was funded through Awards for All and the Greater Manchester Police and Crime Commissioner’s Office.