We’re now almost halfway through our A New Exchange project at Bridge College, Manchester.

We’ve done three workshops out of a total of seven (the last will be a celebration event though). I was apprehensive about this project before it began because I have no experience working with participants with learning or communication needs and didn’t know how I’d cope in a group with a range of need.

Our group of eight young people is quite varied – there are people who are non verbal, people who are quite chatty and a diverse range of support needs. I knew I’d be well supported by staff at the college and would learn loads but there was still some fear of the unknown.

However it has been a much gentler experience than I expected – group members are really good fun and the support staff have been great. So far we’ve done a ‘getting to know each other’ session, a session on photography and a session on junk modelling led by my artist partner Hattie. Shen kicked that off asking people to draw pictures based on a series of prompts – these then fed into what people created. That was a great touch which I’m going to try to remember – sometimes the blank space can be overwhelming.

Gaining feedback from a group where not everyone speaks is obviously challenging but we are trying to leave enough space within our sessions to gauge what is popular. Also we’ve learned that where participants are not really up for getting involved in activity it’s useful to give them a job – handing out items for example or asking them to photograph the session.