Imagined Lives’ was designed as a project to explore creative ways of engaging with looked after children through the use of archival material and to provide the young people with the opportunity to understand and explore links between the past and the present. The East Sussex County Council Record Office has an extensive collection of documents relating to looked after children over the last three centuries. As the archive material is rooted in the local area, young people could explore the concept of citizenship and how their particular identity works within this. The project also linked to on-going work with foster children about their own life stories and helped develop creative and literacy skills.

The young people targeted were a group of year 6 pupils who were undertaking transition work, plus a group of girls and boys in two residential homes.

The project contributed to two local priority outcomes:

• improving the life chances of children and young people
• promoting lifelong learning, training and skills development

In addition specific project objectives included to:

• provide learner centred activities that develop the literacy of the participants
• promote discussion and collaboration among the young people
• raise self esteem
• increase the sense of citizenship through discussions on history and location
• give a sense of ownership to young people of the project and by extension public institutions such as archives and museums
• develop a greater understanding of the work of archives among young people and provide an enjoyable experience of working with historical documents to create their own exhibition

The project began with 8 outreach sessions at the Children’s Homes. These visits introduced young people to copies of archive materials - for example plans of children’s homes and records of the children themselves from 100 years ago. These documents were used as a stimulus to imagine what the lives of these children were like and letters from and to the children were written. The second stage involved 3 workshops held at the County Hall during February half term. 18-25 foster children attended each day and the session included a visit to the Record Office itself.

The workshops involved learning about living and working conditions for children in Victorian times. The group studied maps and diary extracts, which led to discussions on rights and freedoms for children now and then. Participants were given the opportunity to create storylines based on real events, role-play events, make Victorian-style Valentine’s cards and design games comparing life now and then.

The Children’s Team supported practitioners by reminding the children about the workshops and transporting them to the Record Office for visits. They also ensured that all the young people in foster care were collected from their homes and were taken back after the workshops. The team were involved in planning the workshops and brought in additional art materials and games to support the sessions. They also supervised the visits to the Record Office. The partnership meant that those involved with the young people in their role as part of the children’s team could expand that involvement to include informal education.

During the workshops participants were encouraged to take ownership of their own learning. For example, they were offered the choice of creating a role-play rather than a written account. They were also encouraged to lead the facilitators to an aspect of history that interested them. At the end of the project, they completed a formal evaluation form and several young people were also consulted, through informal interviews, about ways in which they would like organisations such as archives and museums to work with them in the future.

The project:

• motivated an interest among the young people involved in how young people lived in the past and raised awareness of how the places in which they live have changed over time.
• promoted discussions of rights, values and responsibilities and how they are affected by the times in which we live
• helped them ‘learn to listen’ and developed their verbal communication skills
• improved literacy levels
• increased young people’s understanding of how historical documents can be used creatively

The children’s team and archive staff were also able to meet young people in a different setting and develop a greater understanding of how to engage them in informal educational activities and the sharing of information.

The total project costs were £4,900. Resources came from Museum Libraries and Archive South East’s Strategic Commissioning Education Programme funded by DCMS and DfES. The breakdown was:

• Personnel £3100
• Young people visits £300
• Resources £1300
• Contingency £200

• Ensure that the project is flexible and able to accommodate a variety of ways and methods of participating, so that the individual interests and needs of the young people can met
• Keep workshops with young people in foster care short and with small groups.
• Involve the young people’s key workers at children’s homes so that they fully understand the significance of the work. This will then enable them to be supportive, expand their own knowledge and ensure that time and transport are made available to the participant.
• Take account of the many competing demands on young people’s time. Young people in care/foster care have both more demands (possible parental contact, visits from key workers etc) and less (it might take them a while to settle in and make friends), which need to be taken into account.
• Use the ‘real’ documents in archives - young people respond much better to real documents than to just being told about them.
• Before the project commences, hold a discussion among the organisations involved to agree what constitutes learning, what is appropriate behaviour and what consequences there should be for disrupting the sessions. Different organizations have may have very different ideas and views.
• Sessions in children’s homes need to be informal, flexible and incorporate the young person’s own specific interests.
• Sometimes we need to expect more from the young people than they have previously achieved, at the same time as supporting them so they do not fail