Make your idea a reality. Join the Agency and turn your passion into a project…
The Agency works with people aged 15-25 from the Butetown, Riverside and Grangetown areas of Cardiff with ideas that need to happen.
We provide training, support, funding and advice from industry professionals, to develop passions into a project that benefits local communities. This could be anything from a boxing workshop, to a music festival.
The Agency Rapid Response is a condensed version of the Agency, where we are working with 9 young people to develop a project over a period of 12 weeks, from conception to completion.
The young people have created an idea called The Sunset Show, where they will commission artists to create a series of ‘pop-up’ performances on the streets of Cardiff.
When I first heard about Agência de Redes para a Juventude (The Agency) about 6 years ago I thought that this would be a dream project to work on, here I am 6 years later and the dream has come true.
The Agency has allowed me to operate in mine and surrounding communities with young people, helping them to help address some of the social issues we face.
Working with young people (Agents) from the Butetown, Riverside and Grangetown areas of Cardiff, Mathilde Lopez, a theatre director and Ali Goolyad, a poet and performer have been using their skills and methodologies and adapting them to social entrepreneurism, using theatre games or writing exercises to help our Agent imagine and develop potential businesses that can possibly address some of the issues or barriers our communities face.
The first cycle of The Agency is geared towards the Agents pitching their idea to a panel, the panel will award three of the ideas a budget of £2000 to be tested and developed in the second cycle. But for me, being awarded the budget is the icing on the cake. What I think is amazing about the Agency has been to watch to group grow as a collective but also to watch the Agents grow in confidence, grow in their ability to problem solve, to grow in their ability to hold an audience.
This really hit home on Saturday 24 November, the Agents were tasked with organising a community event, where they would invite the public to come and listen to their ideas, and give feedback. The event was well attended and it was really heartening to see all of the Agents buzzing, excitedly telling friends, family and complete strangers about their ideas.
I know that if we would have asked the Agents to explain their ideas to complete strangers at the beginning of this process there would have been a lot of sweating and stuttering (as I would have done in the same situation). But because of the methodology of The Agency, started by Marcus Faustini in the Favelas of Brazil and then adapted for the UK by Marcus, Contact Theatre and Battersea Arts Centre, our Agents at this stage were well equipped the handle the situation and handle it well.
It is amazing to think that young people in Rio, Manchester and London have gone through this process and their alumni are now joined by Agents from Cardiff and Belfast (through work carried out by FabLab Belfast).
The Agency has entered Cycle 2, between September and November 2018 NTW worked with 20 young people from Butetown, Riverside and Grangetown to develop ideas for social businesses, the young people (Agents) pitched their idea to a panel in December. The panel awarded 3 ideas a budget of £2000 each to enter a testing phase.
Over the next 16 weeks, the Agents will receive support from an associate/project manager to get their project ideas up and running. The 3 ideas that were chosen are: