Well known places...famous faces

24 November 2008

A group of budding young Picassos were out in force recently, when they exhibited their fantastic pieces of artwork at an art exhibition, held at Caerphilly Council's headquarters, Ty Penallta.

The youngsters took part in a summer art project earlier this year, organised by the local Youth Inclusion Support Panel (YISP), and entitled "Well known places… famous faces".

During the workshop, which provided an excellent creative outlet for more than 50 young people and their families, 15 portraits of local well known personalities were produced, including portraits of Tommy Cooper, James Dean Bradfield and Simon Weston.

The highlight however was undoubtedly when boxing trainer Enzo Calzaghe came along to lend his support to the event, and helped paint a portrait of his son, undefeated boxing champion, Joe Calzaghe.

Caerphilly Council's Mayor, Cllr Anne Collins was the guest of honour at the recent art exhibition, and the portraits are now to be given pride of place in CCBC's headquarters, Ty Penallta.

Cllr Anne Collins said, "The Youth Inclusion Support Panel's work with these youngsters is exemplary. We know how hard it is to sometimes get young people engaged and enthusiastic in a project.

This project went a step further and included the parents of the young people and focused on building the communication bridges between them, which on occasions have broken down or do not work as well as they can.

The result of the project is incredible, it brings together iconic locations with local heroes/heroines and the effect is moving and fills you with pride and a sense of belonging to the Caerphilly county borough area.

I would like to say thank you for giving me the opportunity to be involved in such a prestigious project."

The YISP is a multi-agency planning group that seeks to prevent offending and anti social behaviour by offering support services to children aged between eight and fifteen and their families.

The Safer Caerphilly Community Safety Partnership provides substantial funding for the programme, with the aims of the YISP complementing the current key strategic priorities of the partnership.

The local YISP celebrated its first fully operational year at the end of March. In this time, 105 referrals were received, 65 of those were from the Caerphilly county borough area.

The work of the YISP is of such importance because:

• it helps prevent truancy from becoming the norm for an individual
• it helps prevent families from being prosecuted for a child's non-attendance at school
• it helps ensure that exclusions from schools are kept to an absolute minimum
• It helps intervene to prevent an Acceptable Behaviour Contract being considered

For further information, contact the YISP team on 01495 235 639.