City of Westminster College Early Start Course Tutor Sheromie Brewster has launched the CATCH project (Cultural Arts, Sports & Visual Literacy) for Barbados, in partnership with major London youth arts organisations Photo View UK Ltd and Defcon Workshops.
CATCH is a digital arts initiative to provide young people from the West Indies island with skills in the areas of photography, filmmaking, music, visual and written literacy, communication and sport coaching. This will be achieved by enabling them to develop content for an online digital cultural, arts and sports magazine to showcase work, debate issues and feature interviews and reviews. Throughout the project, participating young people will have access to and support from sports icons, professional artists, editors, photographers and web designers.
The project is based around the Olympic core values (courage, determination, equality, excellence, friendship, inspiration and respect) and has already won the support of the Government of Barbados, University of the West Indies and major sporting bodies, including Barbados Olympic Association; National Sports Council and Kensington Oval Test Cricket Centre. It also has support from MCC Spirit of Cricket.
CATCH will launch initially as a four-week programme in August 2011 and takes place at the Kensington Oval Test Cricket Centre in Bridgetown, Barbados. This area of Bridgetown is characterised by high levels of youth unemployment and low educational attainment.
City of Westminster College’s Sheromie Brewster, who has extensive experience in youth projects, devised the idea because of her own close family and cultural ties to Barbados. She says: “CATCH is about helping the Barbados community, as well as sharing good practice about ways to increase aspirations among disadvantaged young people.
“By adding a vibrant cultural dimension to the lives of these young people, we hope to provide them with insights, skills and valuable experience. At its heart, CATCH is about broadening opportunities for young people by enabling them to tap into different cultural perspectives, develop their own talents, improve their life and career chances and create an ongoing exchange with other young people in the global community via the online magazine.”
Photo caption: City of Westminster College tutor Sheromie Brewster has devised the CATCH youth project in Barbados.
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