Safeguarding as a Community Artist

I often work in main stream schools in Leeds, where I have to conform to safeguarding policies. These are policies and procedures that are impressive to protect and safeguard children and vulnerable people in our society. Each location is different in the sense that they have different modes of working to ensure robust safeguarding within their institution. It really is imperative within society to uphold safeguarding policies, as there are so many vulnerable people that we have a duty of care to protect.

When I go into a school, I have to take my DBS, and two forms of identity. Some also ask for a utility bill too. Some take copies of my ID and then run their checks, some just take down the numbers etc. It differs from place to place. Some places want you to have an updated DBS even though enhanced DBS certificates don’t have an expiry date.  The DBS update service is useful to overcome these differences, and its something Ive decided to do to support best practice.

Some places will allow you as a visitor to be unsupervised within the building, some don’t. And in relation to safeguarding practices, I have to adapt any protocols that each location has into my working practice when I attend. If my work becomes regular, then the school may invite me to participate in their own training. Which I will happily do.

I recently spent three days at an all-age specialist SEND school in Leeds. They have highly rigorous protocols as many of their students have very complex needs. They have an extra layer of safeguarding protocols which I couldn’t get in time and this meant I needed to be supervised all the time. Although its part of their school policy, it meant the staff had to constantly chaperone me, which was really restrictive for them and it also meant I couldn’t be on site unsupervised - not even to sit in my car and eat my lunch.

Since that experience, I’ve been thinking about the complex nature of safeguarding within my community and how I can support it. I applied for some funding recently that required me to have a safeguarding policy and up to date training, I also attended some free training organised by the Curious Creative Minds Network for third sector creatives. They discussed about how we can safeguard our community participants it was interesting, but we ran out of time and I wanted to ask questions about how this applies to what I do. I use public spaces for community art club, and this means I have to think about safe guarding within this context too.

When I work within organisations - I need to adopt their safeguarding protocols first. I’m sometimes not told what these are, and I have to ask questions. If their protocols are not robust, I default to the ones adopted by this CIC and do what is best for my working practice. When I work in the community, renting spaces for art club, I use my own safeguarding protocols because most venues only want to see a current public liability document and risk assessment. Anything outside of that is my responsibility. I am committed to make what I do safe for people I work with, but it is not strait forward, due to the complexities of working with lots of different people and organisations.

Safeguarding protocols vary because communities are all very different and policies are adapted to this difference. This sometimes means there are spaces in the continuation of safeguarding within society. There are different policies and procedure’s in different parts of the country too. But that shouldn’t matter because we should all want robust practices that keep people safe.

I’m updating my safeguarding policy and will be uploading it onto the website in the coming weeks.