A group of young people has been zooming in on their local football heroes in a brand new photography project.
The FOCUS project was set up by Swansea Council’s ELIS (Engaging Learners in Swansea) project and saw a group of youngsters developing their photographic talents with inspiration from Swansea City players.
Mark Gosney, the Council’s Out of School Hours Learning Co-ordinator, said: “The funding came from the Arts Council for Wales’ ESF Reach the Heights programme and the group of eight students aged between 14 and 16 visited the Swans during a training session. Now the images they have captured are being featured in Saturday’s Derby County match programme.”
Chris Griffiths from the Council’s Education team said the experience was invaluable.
He said: “We developed the FOCUS course as part of our ongoing work to help young people who could be at risk of becoming NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training). The scheme helped the young people who took part build various skills including how to take effective pictures in a range of settings. They also learned how to take sports shots, modelling shots and scenery shots and how to use editing software.
“The publisher for the club is kindly going to put some of the pictures the young people took in the programme and the young people will be rewarded for the time they put in by watching the game on Saturday.”
The ELIS programme (Engaging Learners in Swansea) is run by Swansea Council’s Education Department and takes referrals from all of the city’s secondary schools.
Sessions are run from Info-Nation on the Kingsway and include helping young people with GCSE subjects, organising work placements for them and introducing vocational skills to suit their individual needs.
Rhys Jenkins, a pupil from Cefn Hengoed Community School, said: “The course gives you a chance to be creative outside of the classroom. A lot of the sessions are outdoors and we visited some nice areas of Swansea to take pictures before editing the images in our classroom sessions.”
