Find Your Talent inspires children and young people to develop their creative talent and personal skills through direct exposure to high quality arts and culture.

Piloted initially in 10 locations in England, 0 to19s are offered at least five hours of high quality arts and culture every week. In school, in libraries and in other cultural spaces, children gain hands-on experience of writing and performing their own stories, playing a musical instrument, creating digital art, curating an exhibition.

Find Your Talent is co-funded by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council and Arts Council England through the financial support they receive from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Department for Children Schools and Families. For more information about the project, visit www.findyourtalent.org.

How libraries support Find Your Talent

Reading is the ultimate aspiration raiser and one of the most creative, accessible and cheapest ways of engaging with culture. Through reading children develop self expression, self confidence, imagination and empathy. It supports their learning and life chances. Libraries are creative providers, aiming to change children’s lives through reading and writing. This is why libraries and reading are part of every Find Your Talent project.

Libraries will broaden your creative curriculum, helping you to:

Develop a reading group; such as a Manga group or Chatterbooks group
Develop creative reading and writing activities
Offer regular quality storytelling
Organise author or illustrator visits in school, the library or other cultural space. Libraries have excellent relationships with publishers and performers
Connect up young people disengaged with traditional forms of reading through new online reading network groupthing.org
Create volunteering opportunities for young people to read with younger children, using the Summer Reading Challenge in libraries

DCSF recognises the importance of libraries and wants to see closer partnerships between schools and libraries using the How libraries help schools framework

Resources

The resources below are designed to support and inspire libraries and schools in Find Your Talent pathfinders. They will also provide ideas for partners in other authorities wanting to improve the cultural curriculum and creative opportunities for children and young people.

Find Your Talent – libraries unique contribution (Word, 395kb)
This document outlines libraries’ unique contribution to the Find Your Talent cultural offer through reading and creativity

Find Your Talent: Opportunities to innovate (Word 398kb)
Download ideas for consolidating and innovating creative projects which bring together libraries and schools

Find Your Talent: Libraries’ cultural contribution (ppt, 613kb)
This PowerPoint presentation describes how libraries support students of all ages through the Find Your Talent programme

Case studies

Primary school case study: Telford Dance Mission (Word, 233kb)
This case study describes a creative dance-based project bringing together a library, dance organisation and a local primary school

Secondary school case study: Bolton Radio Reading Clubs (Word, 375kb)
This case study describes early developments of Bolton’s Find Your Talent pathfinder. which includes a teenage radio reading club project bringing together a library, secondary school and local radio station

Find Your Talent and culture

Find Your Talent
National website for Find Your Talent pathfinder authorities and other organisations wanting to develop a cultural offer to children and young people. Includes an outlines of each pathfinder
National cultural organisations
Lists national partners involved in the Find Your Talent pathfinder programme. An excellent directory of arts and culture organisations and their creative remit.
Cultural Olympiad 2012
The Museums, Libraries and Archives creative plans for transforming the way people experience the inspiration, learning and creativity of museum, library and archive collections