TR14ers community dance team

Peter Whitbread-Abrutat

TR14ers is a police-led community dance team of about 350 young people in the town of Camborne in Cornwall, UK. (The name TR14ers comes from the local post code.) Membership is free and is open to anyone aged 11 to 18. Dance workshops are led by well-known dance teacher Danny Price and have helped youngsters in Camborne gain self-esteem and confidence as well as an interest in healthier behaviours. Participants from the Police Neighbourhood Team have noted beneficial effects in reduced crime and disorder in Camborne, better health habits among the youngsters and anecdotal evidence of better behaviour in school. TR14ers have participated in eight events since October 2005, including an NHS Live conference in London.

Dance Workshop

TR14ers exemplifies what can be achieved in post-mining communities in terms of social regeneration and the empowerment of individuals by innovation and drive from unexpected actors in the community. While it was started with generous local donations and considerable in-kind support, the programme is now searching for ongoing financial support to ensure its continuation.

Context

In mining towns, the mine often acts as the glue holding together the social and economic fabric of the community, and it may have shaped its cultural identity for generations. After the mine closes, the main raison d’être for that community no longer exists, often leading to social and economic decline. At a personal level, this is manifested as a lack of hope, self-respect and discipline, particularly among young people with reduced educational performance leading to a weak skills base and diminished health. Good practice in post-mining regeneration is about more than environmental rehabilitation. It must include a focus on improving the lives of people in post-mining communities – not just economically, but socially and culturally too.

The history of Camborne in the English county of Cornwall is intimately linked to the rise and demise of the county’s metal mining industry over the past few centuries. The mines dwindled during the late 19th century through the 20th century until, in 1998, South Crofty – Cornwall’s last metal mine – closed, ending millennia of continuous metal mining activity.

The decline of traditional sectors of the economy has ultimately led to high unemployment, market failures and a lack of private-sector investment in infrastructure, buildings and services. Socially, the town’s decline has been manifested by social exclusion, despair and a lack of respect for property and authority. This has led to disadvantaged young people with few community facilities to divert their boredom, heightened anti-social behaviour and, ultimately, crime.

TR14ers

TR14ers is run by a committee of individuals elected by the group. The committee consists of Police Sergeant David Aynsley of the Camborne Police Neighbourhood Team; Tim Vigus, the owner of the premises it uses; and local businessman Norman Garlick. The children meet at school with the police to discuss ideas for the workshops, and biannual meetings are held with the children to propose and vote on their ideas. The first of these meetings was held in January 2005 and 175 children attended.

Dance Workshop during the day

Underlying the organization’s rules is an ethos based on community safety and public health through trust, humility and respect. Anybody from Camborne of eligible age is welcome, provided they are prepared to live by TR14ers’ rules. These are simple: no behaviour that might frighten vulnerable people and no smoking, drinking or drugs. The rules were put in place unilaterally by the police at the beginning of the project and are accepted by and, to an extent, enforced by the young people themselves.

TR14ers’ objectives are to:

Make a positive contribution to Camborne and discourage children and young people from engaging in anti-social or offending behaviour
Provide a safe haven for vulnerable children and young people
Work to connect all communities in Camborne without distinction of gender, sexual orientation or race or of political, religious or other opinions
Provide free dance and associated activities to members between the ages of 11 and 18
Promote physical activity and healthy lifestyles - particularly by avoiding tobacco, alcohol and drugs
Promote the consumption of healthy food and counteract the promotion of unhealthy food
Promote personal and professional development for young people within the structure of the TR14ers

TR14ers runs a two-day workshop every school holiday (six to date) and hopes to open a weekly youth club soon. The children are contacted by letter and they use MSN as an internal communications system. Currently the police make all the arrangements, although they hope to employ a co-ordinator soon. Also, part of the ethos is to offer the opportunity for TR14ers to become involved with the organization.

Impacts

The project empowers children to take control of their own futures in a locality where they feel they have no control and little respect. In so doing, the group works on the assumption that anybody living or working in Camborne is touched in one way or another by disadvantage and tries to work accordingly. The project not only tackles anti–social behaviour and health inequality; it has had considerable success in reducing the effect on the victims of these injustices, with beneficial knock-on effects on the school and family lives of the perpetrators too.

The beneficial effects of the initiative are reflected in four key areas: crime and disorder, health, education and events.

Crime has declined in Camborne, but neither the police nor the project has the skills needed to establish a causal link between the TR14ers and this welcome change; however, there is anecdotal and circumstantial evidence to support this assertion:

The town council has declared that Camborne is a safer place to live since this project started.
An increase in the self-esteem in many children has been noticed, some of whom have become dance leaders in the group. Several of the children are no longer on the police books. It is thought that at least 10 children have been diverted from the path of being labelled Persistent Young Offender, each of whom would have cost the state £170,000 per year, year after year.
The police have seen another side to the children of Camborne that they had not previously experienced: children that the police formerly saw every evening drinking in the street no longer do so, and some have even taken up jogging.

Police Neighbourhood Team members are often hailed on the street by their first names, indicating the strength of the new relationships and making conversations easier. The team has noticed that when they are driving police patrol cars, the children look into the car and on recognizing the officers wave or shout a greeting. Officers they do not recognize from the dance workshops are ignored.

Police officers and TR14ers at Eden

The notion of a common client group between the police and LEAP Active was already established, so it was a natural progression to search for health outcomes as well as those that the police desire, for example: the children are dissuaded from smoking and encouraged to eat healthily and exercise. The group has noticed a significant drop in the number of people taking ‘smoke breaks’ and have calculated that on average each child that attends consumes between three and five portions of fruit per day. The fruit is provided for free by the local Aldi supermarket, an idea that came directly from the relationship between TR14ers and LEAP Active.

It has been calculated that a child who performs every dance that they have rehearsed once will complete 7,301 movements at an average of 128 beats per minute. When added to the warm-ups and rehearsals, this amounts to significantly over the 10,000 steps per day prescribed by the Health Service. TR14ers have calculated that a child who has attended every workshop has burned approximately 24 kilocalories, representing a significant assault on childhood obesity.

In addition to providing an opportunity for young people to interact on their own terms in a safe environment, TR14ers has given many of them a focus outside of school and the family, enabling them to build self-confidence with beneficial carry-overs into other aspects of their lives, particularly at school. To date there has been no rigorous academic research into the impacts of the initiative, but anecdotal evidence highlights the benefits; for example, teachers have told members of the police team that certain children have ‘turned around’ in school as a direct result of the project, and a mother told the Acting Chief Constable that membership of the TR14ers had made her child more manageable at home, making family life easier.

Since October 2005, the TR14ers’ experience has been presented at eight successful events, including at the national level, such as conferences organized by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence and the National Health Service. This included a performance by 101 children and young people in front of 2,000 delegates at the NHS Live conference in London. The children have also explored the Eden Project to look for locations where they might perform in the future.

Such events serve to raise children’s awareness of the value of what they are doing, gaining recognition and building pride, self-esteem and confidence, ultimately with cumulative benefits for their lives and community.

Over the long term, as the project develops, it is hoped that as these children grow and become parents they will educate their children to work with the police to improve their community.

For further information, please contact Sergeant David Aynsley at
David.Aynsley@devonandcornwall.pnn.police.uk