Aspire works with Year 9 (13-14 year olds) students from various schools across East London, encouraging them to actively engage with their learning and life opportunities. The Aspire students are referred to the project because they fall into the category of ‘excluded within school rather than from school’. These young people may not be accessing the curriculum for a range of reasons. Aspire encourages the young people to gain confidence, build positive relationships and have new experiences. Volunteer Coaches support and motivate the young people in coaching sessions and workshops both in and out of school throughout the academic year.

Alongside the coaching sessions that take place in school the Aspire academic year is organised against three themes. Polygon Arts is delivering four series of creative workshops (photography, drama and song writing) for the second term called 'Express' - this will creatively develop ideas introduced in the first term ('Think') during citizenship workshops exploring inequality, law and power.

We also had great fun facilitating a creative day to round up the first term. Aspire participants designed and printed t-shirts to tell the world about the things in society they feel strongly about. Supported by Polygon facilitators, the young people condensed their ideas into clever slogans and designed strong and powerful images to send out clear messages.

Photography by Langdon Park students:

Photography by Morpeth students:

Click here to read more about Aspire on the Toynbee Hall website.

Click below to hear Raine's Foundation School students' track What I Wanna Be.

Audio file(s): 

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what i wanna be.mp3