Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE)
The ACE network's projects include See Me, Minute of Truth and Pull Up a Chair.
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The ACE network's projects include See Me, Minute of Truth and Pull Up a Chair.
Sarah Martin-Denham is the main convenor of the ACE network. She is Associate Professor of Care and Education, Vice-Chancellor Teaching Fellow and Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and author for Sage publishers.
You can contact Sarah for further information or queries about the ACE network: sarah.denham@sunderland.ac.uk.
Children and young people (CYP) excluded from school are often invisible, with negative representation in the media. ‘See Me’ is a pilot creative arts voice project with over 200 CYP, 5-16 years, with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) excluded from school in north-east England. The purpose of the project is to recognise and champion the abilities of those excluded from school.
The first part of the project involved 10 CYP coming to the University to work with Sarah and performing arts company Cap a Pie to express through the arts how they see the world and how the world sees them.
The second part of the project involved over 200 CYP across eight alternative provision and pupil referral units across north-east England. Artists Frank Styles, Jo Howell, Hannah Gawne, and Angela Sandwith provided inspiring video workshops to show their art medium and what brings them joy. Sarah then delivered packs of resources to the schools to support the CYP in creating their own artworks with the theme of ‘joy’.
Three days were spent with 20 Ukrainian children across two secondary schools in north-east England. One was a large urban comprehensive school and the other was a smaller rural school. Purposive sampling was used to ensure the participants had the experience of living in and leaving a warzone.
Throughout the project, a Ukrainian translator was present. The children at both schools were already familiar with the translator as they taught there. Over three days, the children investigated the following research questions through participatory research and the arts (painting, sketching, collage) and writing (poetry and narrative).
Pull Up a Chair engaged 130 children aged 5-16 years in a creative arts project with four local artists. Of these, 68 shared their views on school exclusion. A further 28 children aged 5-16 years, previously excluded from school, took part in a creative arts project.
In 2018, Together for Children commissioned Sarah to ‘investigate the factors that impact upon social and emotional wellbeing of children and young people from 3-16 years, which may lead to exclusion from school’. 174 participants took part in the research, including 55 children previously excluded from school, 41 of their caregivers, and 78 education and health professionals.
Pull Up a Chair is an approach to phenomenological qualitative research led by Dr Sarah Martin-Denham.
Ten young people from a Sunderland Post 16 provision took part in Pull Up a Chair Post-16. Over five days, Ruth, a Theatre Maker, and Laura Degnan, a filmmaker, worked with Sarah and the young people to capture their views on the factors that impacted their attainment at secondary school. The project was funded by the SHINE Trust.