Mareel Takeover
By young people for young people
The Mareel Takeover aimed to enhance opportunities and widen access to the arts for young people in Shetland. The aim was to bring young people together from across Shetland to take part in fun cultural activities and to demonstrate the power of partnership working between local organisations and young people.
Staff in the service had heard from young people that there was a lack of accessible larger events that brought them and their peers together. Previous examples of this were cited such as the Lerwick Tall Ships Race where gigs and activities took place over many days and aimed at all ages. In a local Good Mental Health for All Paper published in 2023, there was evidence that people in the community felt there was not enough non-sporting activities available for people to participate in. Alongside this, young people stated that they didn’t feel their local arts centre (Mareel) was ‘for them’. Staff wanted to change their perceptions of this in a positive and accessible way and embed UNCRC Article 31 (Right to Rest, Relax and Play).
Shetland Islands Council's Youth Services collaborated with Shetland Arts Development Agency to host a large-scale free event for young people. In order to make the activities and performances as relevant as possible, Youth Development Workers worked alongside a local youth forum (Shetland Youth Voice) to help curate the activities on offer. A survey also went out to all youth club members to see which activities would be most popular for young folk. Young people from the Forum also helped facilitate the day and evening events alongside Youth Workers from all across Shetland settings.
The event comprised of larger capacity activities such as free interactive sing-a-long movies in the afternoon and standing concerts at night featuring younger contemporary local bands, established local musicians and more traditional Scottish Country Dancing. Alongside this were more focused and hands-on activities for smaller groups to try Dance, Crafting, Photography and Film-making.
In order to increase accessibility, the service also coordinated times to coincide with public transport on the day and booked extra bus transport to each geographical area to and from the event.
Over 150 young people (aged between 5-17 years old) from across the isles attended the event at some point through the day and a similar number at night. A film commissioned about Takeover can be accessed on Facebook here.
The feedback from young people and their families was overwhelmingly positive. While the offer was for all young people and not targeted, staff observed families attending who had not visited Mareel before, and parents speaking about the fact that free transport alongside the event had made it possible to attend. The partnership has been strengthened after the event with commitment from Shetland Arts to host four similar events in the future.
While staff feel the turnout would’ve been healthy even with a cost attached to activities and with no extra transport provided, they all knew families who benefited specifically from the fact the event was free and that they could get there and back from outlying communities.
While the turnout and feedback was very positive, the service noted that older aged young people did not turn up in the same numbers. From speaking to some young people who didn’t attend, it is clear there needs to be something provided for that specific age (14+) and the promotion/branding of the event needs to be geared towards that age rather than generically to all youth club aged participants in the community.
This contributes to Shetland Partnership’s ‘Participation’ and ‘People’ priorities. Staff from across the Partnership actively sought to involve communities in decision making and service delivery, including idenfitying and involving those who do not often have their voices heard. In addition, more people appeared to feel connected to their communities.