Baby People
Baby People is a music and arts development organisation based in Derby. The UK’s first dedicated Hip Hop school, Baby People engages and supports the needs of the young people in their community through music, art and culture. They believe that art and music can be important empowering tools and forms of expression for anyone in all stages of life. Their work aspires to continually push the boundaries, working practices and experiences of all those it engages regardless of their entry point or background. Their main focus is on working with young people that struggle to engage in education. Baby People recognises that traditional methods of teaching do not work for all young people and with the support of PHF’s Arts-based Learning Fund, they aim to implement alternative ways of working within mainstream education.
Freedom to Learn is a three-year project that will support Baby People to create bespoke and responsive relationships with schools. Over this period, they will work closely with five local schools to better understand and analyse the ways in which their social pedagogy model of teaching can help to support young people and teachers. They also aim to identify new ways of developing their social pedagogy model to enhance and develop their teaching approach to engage young people. They believe that by taking a co-constructive and transparent approach to collaborating with schools over a longer period, together they can work towards creating a more sustainable model of education to engage all students.
“We are currently in year one of the project but already we have identified some key similarities and challenges across the schools even though they all have slightly different ways of working. It is clear to see that all parties involved are thrilled by the prospect of sharing expertise and knowledge to enhance how we all work with young people. We are already beginning to observe an increase in engagement amongst the students we are working with at the schools which is such a huge motivator for us to clearly identify why this is and to see how this can be sustained.”
