Creative & Cultural Skills, the national development body for the areas I and many others work in, recently announced their new Standards for Creative & Cultural Industries. Including one for Standards in Freelancing.

Not a bad idea I thought, it would be good to have something official to aspire to. Then I opened it. It's 92 pages long. That's a heck of a lot of standards. I'm sure they're all admirable. I just question whether in this current climate of time -poor stretched working for many, is 92 pages a realistic sized document to expect people to read?

There are 62 overarching standards, each with a range of bullet pointed sub-standards. I can only say for the time being that I aim to read them and that when I do I'm sure I'll wholeheartedly agree with some and raise a questioning eybrow over others.

But meanwhile I'll be focussing on meeting deadlines for the clients who pay me to read and work on other documents. So who knows how long it will take to get through those 62 standards and report back on my responses...

Image: sadly not my office, but the wonderful work of atelierpompadour

The Equality & Human Rights Commission (EHRC) have launched a new set of resources for teachers.

A series of topics use the arts as a basis for exploring citizenship scenarios with pupils. There are  seven suggested topics, created to support schools entering this years's EHRC Young Brits at Art awards. However the resources are freely available for anyone to access and are relevant to anyone working with young people.

Each topic includes background ideas and information for teachers, an example scenario for teachers and pupils to explore together, and describes the work of a number of contemporary artists working in ways relevant to the topic outlined.

The topics include:
Your Rights - stemming from the United Nations Rights of a Child the topic explores the theme human rights and children's rights.
Homophobic Bullying - exploring homophobic bullying in schools and other places young people meet.
Class Divides Our Futures - asks about how children and young people become judged and channelled into certain schools, roles and careers based on perceptions about their social class.
Staying On - looks at implications for young people in terms of changes to the law about their education and training.
Wild Child - explores adult misconceptions compared to the realities of children's and young people's behaviour.
Creativity as Empowerment - how can we use creativity to remove barriers for people with disabilities?

Resources here
Awards information here