Broadening horizons: Birmingham’s support project For African And Caribbean boys

This is one of a series of case studies I was commissioned to write for the DFES Children’s Fund. I interviewed many children, parents, teachers, social workers, health and projects workers. These case studies were presented to Parliamentary committees and also used as the basis for speeches for ministers and civil servants, and for annual reports and media features.

The underachievement and disadvantages experienced by boys of African and Caribbean heritage has been well documented. Research shows that they are more likely to fail in school and face social exclusion than other children. All too frequently they are portrayed in negative stereotypes connected with anti social behaviours. African Caribbean boys are four times more likely to be excluded from school than their peers. They tend to start out near the top of the attainment ladder in early years but many end up at the bottom by the time that they are ready to leave school.

To prevent this slide down the ladder, Birmingham Children’s Fund has set up the African Caribbean Boys Support Service to increase the opportunities available to this group of children.

Marcia Harvey is the project co-ordinator for the African and Caribbean Boys Support Service. She explains that the Service has helped fund 25 different projects which all help to broaden boys’ horizons in different ways. ‘We want to help boys realise that there are a broad range of opportunities available to them, so they can try out something new, gain skills and develop their confidence,’ she says.

‘The overall aim of the service is to raise the educational attainment of African and Caribbean boys, engaging them in a range of social education activities. We want them to gain a better understanding of the world around them by learning from their experiences and surrounding. Boys also work alongside positive Black male role models who help them to aspire to make more of themselves.’

These are just some of the individual projects which the Service is supporting:

Youth Organic Environmental Project

The Uplands Allotment in Hansworth is the site of the Youth Organic Environmental project (YOE), which particularly encourages black and Asian ‘lads, dads and grandads’ to come together in a companionable environment to plan, plant and grow a broad range of flowers, fruit and vegetables. The Children’s Fund is enabling the project to attract more African Caribbean boys under 13 to take part in its activities.

‘I’d really like to encourage more African Caribbean boys to take up gardening as a hobby but also to educate them to eat more healthily,’ says Neville Lilly, the project manager for YOE. ‘In schools teachers talk a lot about science and children may grow some shoots in a jar, but they’re not getting the wider picture of being part of nature and understanding where food comes from.’

Neville says that gardening is becoming more popular through television programmes but there are few if any images of African Caribbean children taking part. On allotments across Birmingham it’s quite usual to see older African and African Caribbean people producing their own fruit and vegetables, but this culture isn’t being passed on to enough young people.

The YOE project started work on the Hansworth allotment site in March 2003. Together with a group of children and parents, and the help of some neighbouring allotment holders, Neville began the lengthy process of tidying up the project’s designated allotment, and digging, forking and fertilising ground which hadn’t been planted for five years.

A greenhouse was constructed on the allotment at an early stage so that children could plant seedlings and nurture these while the other work continued. The children labelled their own shoots and watched them grow. Neville also showed the children how to make pictures out of dried peas and talked to them about the products they would be growing.

The project’s main activities are from 9.30-11.30am Saturday and Sundays and approximately 13-15 children come to each session. Many of them have been coming since the site clearance began in March. Some parents come to lend a hand but others simply come to see what their children are doing.

‘I want to encourage parents to spend more time with their children,’ Neville says. ‘Dads may go to the gym but they probably won’t take their sons with them. Even if some dads don’t want to garden they still enjoy coming along to encourage their children.’

Children seem to get a lot out of coming, Neville says. ‘We have one boy who comes every week. His mother tells me that he doesn’t like gardening but he never wants to miss a session and he never wants to go home at the end! It’s great for children being out in the open, it broadens their horizons and expands their thinking.’

A conducted tour with Dylan and Jamal

In late June the allotment is covered in a multitude of different fruit and vegetables, proudly labelled in childish handwriting. Eight-year-olds Dylan and Jamal are delighted to show visitors their handiwork.

‘We’ve grown cabbages, onions, cauliflowers, corn and strawberries. We planted kidney beans and carrots and sweet peas and lettuce and sprouts and broccoli,’ Dylan says pointing out the different beds. ‘I did no gardening before I came here. I wanted some experience because I like gardens.’

‘This is a perfume plant,’ says Jamal, indicating an abundantly flowering jasmine. ‘We dig a hole and when we put it in it was only this big –‘ he demonstrates with his hands that it was only a few inches high. ‘It grows all the way up the trellis in a month.’

‘We have to weed regularly. The other day we weed the cabbages. You have to spray things because the slugs and the caterpillars will eat them,’ Dylan says.

The two boys explain that they have been on local television talking about their participation in the project. ‘Our friends are jealous,’ Jamal says ‘but we still haven’t got them to come. All my friends really like cricket and basketball and football. But football is boring.’

‘Yeah basketball is just throwing a ball into a net – that’s boring,’ Dylan says. ‘You get fresh air and stuff coming here.’

Jamal wants to show visitors the woodchip pile and demonstrate how they are making a raised flowerbed area for wheelchair users. ‘The woodchip pile smells really healthy – and that’s compost over. We put the garden rubbish in there when we finish and when it dries up you can put it round the plants.’

‘I want to be a gardener when I grow up, planting and weeding. Sometimes it’s hard work but I don’t mind that,’ Dylan says.

‘It’s hard to fork the earth but it’s good fun!’ Jamal agrees. ‘And it helps you to get up earlier!’

Moseley Tennis Club

It’s Saturday morning at Moseley Tennis Club. The club is set in an affluent area of elegant tree lined avenues, but the children and young people playing on the courts reflect a far broader catchment area. Black, white and Asian children play alongside each other and parents from a broad range of cultural and social backgrounds sit around chatting and watching their children’s games.

‘When I became chair I was conscious of the membership of the club. I was just seeing predominantly white, wealthier families coming to play tennis. I did a survey and found that we weren’t at all representative of the local community. I wanted to do outreach and find ways of bringing tennis to a much wider range of children. My ultimate aim is for Moseley to be the best club in the area and I saw that there was a lot of raw talent that wasn’t being tapped,’ says Michael Carey, chair of the club.

Michael applied to the African Caribbean Boys Support Services for funding to develop outreach among inner city schools. Using this money he arranged for a tennis coach run regular sessions at several of the inner city primary schools and sports centres. The club then started to bus some of the children into the club on Saturday mornings, for children and parents who wanted to take up this option. Some of these children and their parents have since become members of the club. ‘Families who had no previous experience of tennis clubs are now integrating and becoming part of the club,’ Michael says.

More recently the club has been running a scheme to offer specialist coaching to children who show a particular aptitude for tennis. Currently there are three children, aged six, eight and 10, coming to the club on Wednesday and Thursday evenings to benefit from this scheme.

Eight year-old Nathan has been playing tennis for a year and enjoys the specialist coaching he receives. ‘I like playing matches,’ he says. ‘I like practising my forehands and backhands. Backhands are quite difficult. Tennis is my favourite sport and I would like to win Wimbledon one day. I support Tim Henman. It makes me feel happy when people tell me I am good at tennis and I want to do even better.’

Hicham Abbasis is one of the tennis coaches working with the children. ‘This country is poor in black players,’ he says. ‘France used to have Yannick Noah and America has the Williams sisters. But here we don’t have any leading black players. It’s important to make tennis popular. We want to see a lot of black tennis stars – perhaps some of the children here will be coming through in 10 years time.’

Young musicians

Aston music project runs a variety of music and drama activities for children who are predominantly from African Caribbean families.

Kyle is 13 and plays the euphonia, a brass instrument. He says: ‘I found it interesting to learn. I hadn’t played an instrument before. When I grow up I want to be a composer because I’m good at making music. We do project like making music from a picture and I’ve made music for a video. I’d like to write film music. My favourite film music is Jurassic Park - that’s by John Williams.’

Michael is also 13 and plays the flute. ‘I don’t know why I chose it but it sounds better than the saxophone or clarinet. I like coming here because you get to see different people and you learn from the people around you. One of my friends from school plays trombone and they are really good, and one of my friends plays violin. Most of the people in my class are playing keyboard,’ he says.

Fourteen year-old Mark hadn’t played before he joined the orchestra. He now plays guitar and keyboard. ‘My Dad told me about the orchestra because he knew I had thought about playing. I like any kind of music but mainly gospel. I like playing but it’s just a hobby, I don’t want a career in music. I like learning new things because it feels good.’

Parents involvement

Basil Beaumont is a parent and the chair of the parents association for the orchestra. Basil’s family became involved in the original Children’s Fund sponsored orchestra when another parent told him that free music lessons were being offered to children. Basil took his two daughters along, and they both became keen on the violin.

Basil says that the orchestra now has more than 180 active young musicians on its database – plus the same number on a waiting list! ‘What I like about this orchestra is that it’s not just the chance to play music, it’s also the other activities that are available to the children. My girls go to hear performances at Symphony Hall quite regularly. A lot of the children and parents wouldn’t normally go to these kind of events but they are now getting involved. Children are learning that there’s more to music than hip hop – which is fine - but without these activities they would never know about those different kinds of music.’

‘The other day I met a mother in a shop, both her sons play guitar and keyboard. Originally the older brother, Mark, was going to private lessons but his brother started coming to our orchestra. And the brother started to catch Mark up from the classes he was doing with us on Saturdays. So now both boys come to us, and really love what they are doing. And this way it puts money back into the pockets of the community. Music lessons cost about £20 an hour and now those parents can that money towards something else for the family. We don’t ask parents to pay for their children to come, we only ask people to contribute if a child damages an instrument. That encourages children to treat instruments with respect when they take them home with them.’

The Academy is working with Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (BSO) who sent along the theme tune from Neighbours which some of the children are currently rehearsing. Members of the BSO have also been working with some of the more experienced children who are able to read music, and the BSO has plans to run future workshops with the Academy. ‘The aim is for some of our children to eventually perform pieces on stage, which gives the children a challenge and something to work towards,’ Basil explains.

Digital Club House

Also running on Saturday in the same building as the orchestra, is the Digital Club House. This is a computer based project which has received funding from the African Caribbean Boys Support Service, to help more children learn computer skills.

‘People think children understand computers but a lot of them only know how play games on them. They don’t really understand how to use a computer properly. Also a lot of these kids come from families who can’t afford a computer. So we teach them things like aligning, indenting, line spacing, copying and moving text, bold and underlining. After they’ve worked through those stages they can go on to learn about databases and spreadsheets. We even have one young boy who comes in to study website design. In our current world everyone needs computer skills to help with their work prospects,’ says Geoffrey Tomlinson, the worker with the Digital Club House.

Geoffrey holds sessions for children three nights a week and children who don’t have access to computers at home can come into the Club to do their homework. If a child has no homework to do then Geoffrey gives them exercises to work on which develop their computer skills. These exercises are marked by Geoffrey and each child has a file for their work.

On Fridays nights and Saturdays children can come into the Digital Club House room to play computer games but some children also choose to work on projects, such as researching famous black people in history. Today, Michael has finished his orchestra practice and has come to do some school work about Henry VIII. ‘But mostly I play games when I’m here,’ he says. ‘We’ve got a computer at home but I can’t get on it much ’cos my brothers and sisters need it for their homework. So I get to play games here,’ he says.

Geoffrey says that playing computer games can be quite important for some children. ‘One boy comes here frequently to do research for an exam, but there are also times he just needs to play. Playing games can help to relax their minds if they’ve had a long day at school or been working hard. But I’m also really impressed by how many kids come here after a day at school and then want to do more educational-based stuff.’

Names of some children and families have been changed to preserve confidentiality

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Broadening horizons: Birmingham’s support project for African and Caribbean boys - Case study for the DFES Children’s Fund

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