Sefton's Complementary Education Service Teams Up with Traveller Community

Sefton has a long established Traveller community and Sefton’s Complementary Education Service has worked in partnership with this often hard to reach group, for many years.

Our regular site visits and discussions with young people and parents, highlighted a desire to learn more about the workings of business and finance. This is particularly important in the present climate as the majority of Gypsy Roma / Travellers are self-employed.

One group in particular, teenage Traveller girls and women, were very keen to develop these skills.

Working together, we set up a mini enterprise project in collaboration with a community arts group, to create unique, hand-made pieces of jewellery.

The Traveller young people and parents regularly attended the sessions held at the Pinefield Centre during the Autumn term. They self financed the project, undertook market research, interviewed shoppers and analysed the data in order to understand what styles were popular and what prices were appropriate.

The enterprise company was named ‘A Twist of Art’, and its aim was to profitably produce quality jewellery in time for the Christmas period.

The enterprise was a success and the young people were proud to hire a table at Redgate School’s Christmas fair to sell their products which were all branded with the Roma flag and labelled ‘ Proudly made by the Traveller Community’.

‘A Twist of Art’ made a healthy profit and the group voted to use this to purchase additional materials. An unexpected outcome of the enterprise was that one of the parents involved was keen to develop this further on the Traveller Site with the aim of producing products for sale at the annual Appleby Horse Fair.

The use of ICT and photography was an important element of the project as Travellers have often been part of the ‘Digital Divide’. The rise of new technologies such as 3G web access and sites such as Ebay can encourage the setting up of E-shops to enable Traveller groups to trade electronically regardless of location.