SEW ARTS HOMESCHOOL PROGRAM

Esperance Community Arts will deliver a series of 32 arts-based workshops facilitated by local artists over 12 months for home-schooled students(16 x 1.5hrs for children aged 6 – 11yrs and 16 x 2hrs for youth aged 12-17yrs) using the SEW Arts resources that have been developed around the 15 Wellbeing Factors identified by the TKI research team. Check Telethon webpage here

Eight workshops will be delivered each term over 8 weeks (4 for students aged 6 – 11 years and 4 for students aged 12 – 17years). These will alternate so that students in the two ages groups will have the opportunity to attend fortnightly. While our initial workshops will have a visual arts focus, students will be consulted each term about what artforms or arts practices they would most like to access the following term and we will try to source appropriate artists.

This project will be launched with training provided face -to-face or online by the TKI SEW Arts research team in July 2023. All parents plus artists and arts workers involved in the program will be invited to participate.

At the beginning of each term, parents will be invited to identify the wellbeing factors that they would most like to be addressed through the workshop program.

The ECA Executive Officer (Mulcock) and the Home-school Project Coordinator (Pokela) will work with the artist facilitator and, where necessary, the TKI research team, to develop age-appropriate activities that are informed by the relevant SEW Arts resources. students will be encouraged to continue collaborating on their artistic projects online outside of the workshop times.

This project will be delivered in terms 3 and 4 in 2023 and terms 1 and 2 in 2024 and the workshops will take place at Esperance Community Arts Space.

COLLECTING FEEDBACK

We will engage one of the home-school parents, Bernadette Pokela, who is also a visual artist, to take on the role of coordinating/liaising with the home-school community and assisting with gathering feedback. Where possible we will engage artist facilitators who are also part of the home-school community (e.g. visual artist Elaine Fewings). As part of this project our team will also

• Help to adapt the resource to younger age groups

• Assist to develop ways to use the resource with parents and community members

• Support with developing the evaluation framework and trying out different ways of collecting data

• Help to develop a data base of activities that relate to the wellbeing factors. Parents will attend workshops with students and will be encouraged to continue the activities at home.

At the end of workshop block we will work with home-schooling parents in to gather and collate feedback on how the SEW Arts resources can be implemented in homes and how the information can best be presented. Parents will also be invited to reflect on how the resources support their own self-development. This process will include trialling a selection of the new parent-focused learning modules that will be available in early 2024.

The Home-school SEW Arts Coordinator (Pokela) and the ECA Executive Officer (Mulcock) will facilitate these conversations and Mulcock will collate the data. Pokela and Mulcock will also be responsible for collecting completed consent forms from all families

Mulcock, Pokela, and the artist facilitators will meet each term online with the TKI research team to provide feedback. Interested home-schooling parents will also be invited to participate in these feedback sessions. With parental permission TKI team could also attend some of the workshops and /or some workshops could be filmed.

SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL WELLBEING AND MENTAL HEALTH BENEFITS FOR STUDENTS

The opportunity for home-school students to come together in a neutral space to work on collective and individual arts-based activities has positive social and emotional wellbeing outcomes in itself. Parents have also acknowledged that it especially valuable for older students to work with others in their own age group. We will also identify ways to link the workshop outcomes to community events or other public outcomes where possible (e.g. informal exhibitions in the Art Space on market days) as a way of linking home-schooled students and their families in with the wider community. The size of the home-school community has increased dramatically in Esperance over the last few years so this project is very timely in that it can provide additional support for parents who have chosen to home-school. We will liaise closely with the local home-school moderator, Linda Shipard, who is currently supporting 78 students and their families.

Consultation and partnerships

Esperance Community Arts has partnered with the Home-school Community over the last three years to deliver Act Belong Commit Resilience for Youth through Arts workshops presented each term by First Nations educators Pauline Bonney and Carol Thompson thanks to Healthway funding. The success and popularity of these workshops led the Home-school Moderator and parents to request additional arts-based workshops that could further support positive social and emotional wellbeing outcomes for the growing number of home-schooled students in Esperance.

Parents also requested that primary school students and high school students have the opportunity to work separately to give them more space to explore age-relevant issues with their peers, and to have some time apart from their younger siblings. Experience artist facilitators and educators, Pauline Bonney and Carol Thompson confirmed the need for this approach after trialling the SEW Arts resources, some of which are not really age appropriate for primary school students. We have designed the current workshop program in response to these requests.

Parents have also indicated that they have many demands on their time so opportunities to provide feedback on the SEW Arts resources need to be tailored and manageable. For this reason we are seeking funds to employ one of the home-school parents to take on a liaison and coordination role to assist with consultation, scheduling of workshops and organising and hosting of feedback sessions to reduce the overall burden on other parents. We will also partner with other organisations (e.g. Esperance Wildflower Festival) to create opportunities for home school students to share their work publicly at community events and to source free or low cost materials for their creative projects (e.g. Esperance Care Services second hand shop)

The Esperance home-school community (an informal network of parents) and the Home-school Moderator (employed by the Education Department) are the key local partners on this project along with the TKI research team. The Home-school Moderator will assist us to promote these workshops to all 45 families who currently home-school their children through the Department of Education (additional families are enrolled through Distance Education Schools), and has also offered to assist with collection of feedback.