History/Background of Organisation
The
Initiative Factory was established in 1998 and its key objectives
are to relieve poverty, sickness and hardship and to advance education
within Merseyside.
The Initiative
Factory operates in Liverpool and one of its founding purposes is
to alleviate poverty and hardship amongst dockworkers and their
families and dependants on Merseyside and to promote and support
educational and training schemes. Those aims and objectives are
now being extended to the wider community of Merseyside.
Since its
inception The Initiative Factory has been extremely active in these
areas particularly in developing its capacity to deliver education
and training activities.
Volunteers
are critical in the success of work undertaken by The Initiative
Factory, as are partnerships with organisations, which have similar
goals and objectives.
Geographical Area
The Initiative
Factory operates across Merseyside with particular focus for its
activities on or around the Liverpool City Centre. This area experiences
multiple deprivations and is home to many disadvantaged groups including
refuges and asylum seekers, ethnic minority groups, lone parent
families and those most economically disadvantaged within society.
A Factory of Ideas
The
concept of the Initiative Factory is based upon a partnership between
traditional educational institutions, the private sector and the
creative arts sector. With the potential of information and communications
technologies (ICT's) the project will develop it's established international
partnership base for the benefit of the local community. The IF
will particularly target those who have left the education system
with a negative attitude - young people currently within the education
system who cannot relate to learning, and older age groups wishing
to explore computer technology for the first time
The
Initiative Factory will act as an incubator unit for schemes with
an emphasis on the use of leading edge technologies. It will provide
a factory for community led initiatives covering social, economic,
employment, educational and environmental issues.
The
Initiative Factory will also concentrate on more traditional access
points to employment through its co-operative labour supply company,
Liverpool Dockers & Stevedores.
The
creative arts will be the focal point for targeting the interests
and needs of the community. This approach will encourage access
to a learning environment, with Liverpool JMU providing academic
verification and curriculum development. The
Initiative Factory aims to provide a sympathetic environment which
will enable and encourage community led initiatives to be developed
and realised.
The
Initiative Factory considers ICT skills as inter-related, providing
technical knowledge as well as the potential to utilise these acquired
skills in enterprises which will have commercial use. For example
ICT provides avenues for developing practical and academic qualifications
and abilities from communication and information skills, via the
internet, to the potential to produce CD Rom packages. Digital film
emanates naturally through this technology as another skill acquisition,
likewise music, and other forms of creative activity, from recording
local history to developing theatre, local crafts etc.
29 Hope Street will provide
the potential of a working space (factory) to plan, access and deliver
community based initiatives. This building is ideally situated in
what JMU terms its 'Digital Quarter' being in an acknowledged 'area
of learning'. The Hope St. location is central and accessible to
the Urban Areas. The building itself will be open to the community
and it is further envisaged that the creative/performing/learning
arts element will complement delivery of educational/personal development/ICT
skills that will be available. Its academic credentials will be
publicized through the IF's firm partnership base with JMU as well
as the University of Washington and California whose students will
be 'online' participants on an ICT project, that has acquired ESF
funding, for 25 beneficiaries which began in February 1999.
In
February 1999 the IF invited Chris Carlsson, the director of an
interactive multimedia history project, Shaping
San Francisco, to visit Liverpool with a view to speaking to
local colleges, schools, libraries and museums in relation to the
potential for such a history of Liverpool to be undertaken. Written,
not by 'great men' but by the communities themselves. This is a
'flagship project' of the IF and will have extraordinary potential
in targeting the unemployed to access a learning course focused
upon their own cultural histories. Youth Exchange links are already
being examined with Dublin. The IF continues to work closely with
many government initiatives in the area of lifelong learning. In
Europe our partnership base includes two Paris based private companies,
Audio Multimedia International Production, AMIP, who wish to co-produce
a series of films on social inequalities throughout Europe and ARTIS,
a performing arts centre who wish to exchange art between our two
Cities. Other partnership bases exist that inform the potential
of networking within the community sector and the IF is keen to
place emphasis upon these developments.
View
the structure of the Initiative Factory
Rock
The Dock
We have established,
in partnership with Creation Records, the production of a music
CD featuring 17 groups and musicians from Oasis to Billy Bragg.
This CD went on release in September 1998 and the funds raised from
this sale will go to our Charitable Trust and be used to further
our community projects.
A
writers workshop begun during the docks dispute in 1997, developed
into a two hour drama, screened on Channel 4 on July 11. Jimmy McGovern
and Irvine Welsh were involved as guest writers and it is they who
finalised the script. Ken Loach's film company Parallax pictures
have been involved and this drama was a joint production between
Channel 4/Parallax Pictures and the Initiative Factory. The practical
support from these colleagues has contributed substantially to the
creation of the Initiative Factories aims and objectives within
the community.
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