Image: Platform arts
What is Platform?
The aspiration was always about young people being able to come to Platform and take part in high-quality arts activities across a range of forms, from performing arts, to visual arts and creative writing. It was designed and created with 24 young people in 2009 to give them the opportunity to work with artists and arts companies, not only to develop their skills but also to gain an awareness of how they might pursue a career in the creative industries.
Why Islington?
Islington has an extraordinary arts infrastructure for a small borough but the arts organisations don’t necessarily know how to find young people when they are saying they really want to get involved.
How do you get young people on board?
We went out into schools and gave them a taste of the project because some of them might not even know that it’s something they will be interested in.
How do you fill the arts gap that local schools fail to provide?
We teach life drawing because at schools it’s a difficult thing to offer. It’s the sort of thing you’d go off to do at art college when you’re a little bit older so we do life drawing for young people over 16 to give them a taster of what art college might offer.
Image: Platform arts
What is Occupy Platform?
It’s about giving young people a chance to get involved and providing them with the chance to work with a number of companies and different art forms towards one project. We’re not saying come here and do an art workshop or come here and do a photography workshop, we’re saying come here and do something that you’ve never tried before. You might come because you like dance but you might mix dance with spoken word and create something that’s completely new.
Sum up Platform’s end goal.
There are a lot of people who can afford to have music and arts lessons but there are also a lot of young people in Islington who don’t have that opportunity. Platform is very passionate about making sure that opportunity is available, regardless of your circumstances.
Occupy Platform will take place on 6 April 2013 from 1pm.
