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Community Arts Services

  Qualification Guide

Meet the Trainers

Join us on SANe:
The Social Arts Network

Introduction to our Practitioner Training

Arts Practitioners Training is designed for arts practitioners who are passionate about encouraging groups of vulnerable people to use an art form as a tool for personal growth and whose desire is to deliver arts & education projects in challenging environments such as Criminal Justice System settings.

Arts Practitioners Training combines three core units – Working in the CJS, Delivering Accredited Courses in the CJS and Working with Vulnerable Groups. Currently, we are also developing art-form specific units. We currently offer Developing Drama Workshop Skills and Developing Creative Writing and in the near future we hope to be able to offer Dance, Music and Visual Arts units.

All of the Arts Practitioners Training units are Open College Network accredited at Level 3. When the course is completed, learners will receive a certificate in Arts Practitioner Training detailing the units achieved. Certificates will also be issued for individual units.

Arts Practitioners Training is a unique professional development opportunity for freelance arts practitioners who may already have some experience working in prisons, YOI’s, with young people at risk or other disadvantaged groups. It offers a chance to increase their level of expertise and activity in these settings and deliver high quality projects. Escape Artists is also able to offer practitioner training as part of an internship programme, providing essential knowledge and hands on experience of delivering projects.

Our Approach

What follows is an abstract based on our experience of what artists have been telling us over the last few years:

'I am a freelance artist who is privileged to have had access to high quality arts education and training, and I am able to work regularly in the commercial and educational sectors.

I know that the arts can have an enhancing effect on people’s lives.

I am fortunate to have had some experience of working with vulnerable groups, delivering an arts programme which created an environment like no other. Witnessing the change in people who started out with little or no self-confidence was a powerful lesson in what the arts can do, and what people can achieve, given the right support.

I would like to work in a prison or with other marginalised people - but I don’t want to be an employee - I need to retain my flexibility, my freelance status. I need to work in partnership with an organisation that is well-connected, with a knowledge of the system that can find work for me.

I know I have the ability to deliver artistic programmes of the highest quality, but I am aware that I need to develop my skills and gain a deeper understanding of the issues facing prisoners and other marginalised groups if my work is to have any long-term effect.

I recognise the need for administrative support so that I can focus on delivery. Working with vulnerable groups requires insurance, Criminal Records clearance, Child Protection policies, codes of practice, things which I simply don’t have the time or the knowledge to manage.

I want to work with and learn from other artists with experience in this field and I need access to the right equipment and educational materials so that I can realise my ideas.'

Escape Artists provides individual artists with the services and support they need:

• Accreditation for your education programmes
• CRB clearance
• Contracts & insurance management
• Materials & equipment
• Administrative support
• Professional development
• Access to teaching materials
• Current information & policies
• Consistent employment
• Stimulating & challenging working environment
• Access to artistic networks

We match artists and their unique skills with the right client group and we facilitate and support access for the artist to continued work opportunities in the sector.

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Find out more about our approach to working with arts practitioners

Do you have the skills to run one or more of our arts practitioner training courses? If so, we'd like to hear from you. Find out more...

Call Lottie Ettling on 020 7655 0909 for details about all our practitioner training courses.

How to find us

If you do not wish to register for a course at this time, but you would like to be kept informed about our upcoming training courses, then please add your name to our email Training List.

The Escape Artists Practitioner Training Programme has been developed with the support of the Monument Trust and the Wates Foundation