QIC: Creating future leaders and supporting vulnerable young people

Quality Interactions and Creativity (QIC) is a project that works to create future leaders, serving our communities and supporting vulnerable young people. Find out about the project and support their crowdfunding campaign with Crowdpatch.

Life is like a book that never closes and never ends and the pages are blank, because it’s for you to fill.

Welcome fellow travellers on this journey we call life. Allow me to share a glimpse into my personal history.

My name is Talmud Bah and I’m an international consultant in Creative Education, relationship building and solution-focused thinking. I have lived in South East London for most of my life, working closely in the community and watching it suffer as our economy has waned. This ebbing away of community spirit fired my passion, inspiring me to find a means of investing in the children and young people of Lewisham.

My enthusiasm led me to formulate a vision of what I wanted to achieve in my neighbourhood:

• To inspire and enhance the quality of interaction of vulnerable children and young people in Lewisham primary schools personally, socially and emotionally, through creative education.

• To enable these young people to develop, empathy, communication and interactive skills, by removing barriers to their learning and by fostering collaboration and problem solving

• To achieve this by using creativity, my diverse experience and skill set, my personal perspective and insight, and my belief in the untapped potential, integrity, and limitless capacity of human beings.

This vision led me naturally to design a project, but how was I to get it started? How could I share and impart my practice, foster new thinking in young people and prepare them to work with and support, vulnerable children?

I shared my ideas with like-minded people and my project - Quality Interactions and Creativity (QIC) - along with two others was picked for a crowdfunding campaign nurtured by RSA London, in collaboration with CrowdPatch. I am raising money (via contributions from rewards) for a specific initiative that involves me and a group of trained young people working with a selection of Lewisham primary schools in September 2016.

QIC pilot programme

Creating future leaders, serving our communities and supporting vulnerable young people

QIC is a project that trains young people (aged 18 -29) from diverse backgrounds and experiences to develop and acquire skills in creativity, solution-focused thinking, arts, adaptability, responsiveness, teaching and facilitation. The crowdfunding campaign will enable these trained young adults to run pilot sessions with vulnerable pupils in Lewisham primary schools (years 4-6) in order to inspire, support and enable them to realise their own capacity for greatness. By offering this provision at no cost to the schools, it guarantees access to those most in need, giving pupils positive role models and mentors, while creating paid work opportunities for young trainers.

The need for provision for children and young people in Lewisham

Having a voice is a gift, but imagine using your voice to say words and knowing that you're speaking but yet not being heard?

Welcome to the world of the average inner-city young person.

Marginalised and stigmatised, battling against images of themselves projected by the media, these young people have no greater need than any other human being: the right to belong and be accepted. Yet they find themselves both heralded and demonised at the same time.

Young people have an ever-contradictory image in society, as both its future and its demise.

Young adults from marginalised backgrounds, perhaps poorer neighbourhoods with high unemployment and low academic achievements, are less likely to be seen as a pivotal part of British society and its future prosperity.

Vulnerable children and young people

The London Borough of Lewisham states the following policy:

"We know that our children are hungry for, and capable of, great success, and our challenge is to dismantle the barriers that they face. Most of the barriers are the result of challenging circumstances and lack of opportunity. We want to extend children’s horizons, so that they actively take advantage of the opportunities that are, and will increasingly be, available to them as they move into our secondary schools and become citizens of Lewisham. To raise aspirations in this way, our children need learning environments that inspire, excite and engage them."

Such environments allow young people the flexibility to learn in ways tailored to their needs, following a curriculum that is delivered in modern, bespoke facilities. Persistent non-attendance links directly to young people failing to achieve and – in some cases – to not completing their education.

Lewisham invests greatly in its children, young people and adults, but as the borough is young, it's an ever-increasing challenge to meet the need for provision. 

How do we effect change?

In order to make a difference and therefore shift the status quo, we must resolve to 'do' something, using personal incentives, wills forged by fire, heart opened with love, integrity and courage.

How can fellows contribute?

Please donate money in exchange for rewards, volunteer your skills, talents and/or contacts and share news about the QIC crowdfunding project.

We would greatly value your support in the following areas:

• Venues for training,

• Training resources,

• Promotion of programme,

• Promotional resources (e.g. printing, posters, leaflets, t –shirts, etc.)

• Promotion through digital marketing and social media

Due to the great support we have enjoyed so far, the QIC crowdfunding project has accumulated £780 towards our £3,000 target – currently 26% of the funding we need – so we must journey ever forward towards our goals.

Talmud Bah FRSA
Quality Interactions and Creativity Project Designer

Talmud Bah is a Fellow of the RSA and Director of QIC. Get in touch with him through his MyRSA profile or on any of the above platforms.

Crowdfunding project:  www.crowdpatch.co.uk/qic-lewisham

Facebook: www.facebook.com/qicleaders​

Twitter: @infoQic | @TalmudBah

Websites: www.qicleaders.com | www.talmudbah.com

Read about the two other RSA-supported Crowdpatch projects