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Showcase the Street was established in 2003. At the start, it was a small group providing dance class for girls who want to dance but nowhere to go. As the company continue to grow, Showcase the Street started to offer the dance class and sports class for young people at a lower price. It is worth mentioning that they have some projects working with young people who are disengaged in the struggling with their life. Some of these young people are currently in young people's prisons. Those young people put themselves at risk through the behaviour at ages 14 and 15. A lot of their work is to improve young people's confidence, their self-esteem, and their journey in life. They work with roughly about 3,000-4,000 young people every week. They have five local authorities across Scotland by now.
Showcase the Street is a limited company, and it is also a Scottish charity regulated by Office of Scottish Charity Regulators (OSCR) as well. They carry the higher amount of scrutiny by the government than other company does. As a charity, they have their special scheme which is to help young people and the community through the use of sports and the arts. With particular emphasis on people who stay in areas of deprivation.
In term of innovation, they have the intention to create Virtual Reality (VR) facilities in their building. They would like to use VR advanced technology to help people, especially someone with disability. They form a cooperation plan with a Chinese company called KAT VR. They have a paid game VR, VR machine, and VR headsets. KAT VR has a treadmill which can go any direction, 360 percent degrees. Showcase the Street plan to raise funding and purchase six machines like that. They can use advanced VR technology for lots of different things. For example, VR can help those people who have anxiety and are scared about the specific situation. The local university in Dundee, Abertay University will participate in the designing project for Showcase the Street. Abertay University has a degree course-- the Computer on Gaming. They are going to create games which Showcase can apply to help people.
Both the arts education and VR facilities, are the tools that Showcase adopted to help young people to go back to a "normal life". Showcase the Street hopes that every child and young people can have a bright life experience in the community.
Fergus Storrier first established the Showcase in Dundee. Fergus’s brother died outside the nightclub when he was around 40, Fergus and his family believed that his brother was killed because he was dealing with drugs. That unexpected news made up his mind to do some valuable things to put back in society.
Based in Dundee, Showcase the Street aims to involve young people whose age between 3 and 18 years old in various activities and also help the young person who has a terrible life. Fergus and his team have saved plenty of young persons’ lives during nearly 15 years in business.
Showcase the Street provides opportunities for poverty and disabled kids to involve in dance, art, or sports classes for free. Because there are some families near their factory whose parents are drug users or who cannot afford rents, Showcase the Street is running a family project that is people can come to their factory for free to play with their kids and Showcase the Street will provide food and other things for them.
The organisation is focused on working in Scotland, and it has expanded to let more kids afford the art classes. They are across five local authority areas which are Dundee, Angus, Perthshire, Aberdeenshire, and Fife.
Showcase the street, as a registered charity regulated by OSCR (SC035025), aims to promote, maintain, improve and advance the education of children, young people and adults, the health of the residents in the area which the company operates and the improvement of the opportunities for the educationally, socially, and rurally disadvantaged by all appropriate means and particularly by encouragement of the Arts including the arts of drama, dance, music, singing, literature and visual arts and thereby improve the conditions of life and the community spirit of the inhabitants of the area. The expenditure of Showcase, the Street Charity for charitable activities, increased 14.19% to £676,511 (2015: £592,468) in the year 2016.
Showcase the Street’s goals are consistent with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the following factors, to build a better business “for” the world.
Goal 1 – End poverty in all its forms everywhere.
Goal 3 – Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.
Goal 4 – Ensure inclusive and quality education for all and promote lifelong learning.
Goal 9 – Build resilient infrastructure, promote sustainable industrialisation and foster innovation
Goal 16 – Promote just, peaceful and inclusive societies
Showcase the Street runs the charity to help the children and people in poverty. Not only provide them food and education, but also help them to build a sound common value. Meanwhile, Showcase the Street offers quality education of arts for young people, which can have the effect of saving people who had horrible experiences and making them have healthier lives.
Showcase the Street is an arts education authority. However, the duty and responsibilities it accounts for, are not just teaching arts. They use arts as a brush to draw a beautiful picture for children. They use arts as nourishment to feed poverty stricken people to have a healthy life. They use arts as a bridge to connect the poverty stricken people with this society. Last but not least, Showcase engages in building a peaceful and harmony society by doing sustainable business for this world.
Showcase the Street earns the revenue from
the arts and sports education for young people and reinvest the most parts of
the income to the society and other charitable activities. The Showcase also
raises funds from the UK National Lottery and other sources. When talking about
the strength of raising funds, Fergus Storrier claimed that the brand
recognition and brand value are the critical factors. As a company/charity
working mainly with children, the Showcase can give many inspiring stories to
touch people. It is easier to get financial support when people recognise your
corporate culture and social values.
The original intention of the Showcase is to provide arts education and venues rental for young people. Gradually, they offer help for some young people who are disengaged in the struggling with their life. With the growth of the company, the scale of their activities to give back to society becomes bigger. They arranged teachers to help each problematic child. They helped children who are tired of study, making them happy to go to school every day.
Showcase the Street also advocate bringing children into charitable activities to encourage children to become a kind person for society. They work with college students to build their positive awareness of the charity. They do this for the sake of the sustainable development of charitable activities.
Showcase the Street focus on the protection of the environment, the building they running use a variety of energy saving technology like the LED light, Bear heating. Their LED lighting costs 50% less waste than the fluorescent. The organization recycle the majority of their waste. However, the environmental impact is measured against the cost. Fergus Storrier pointed out it costs £60,000 pounds before they can actually save energy for the environment. The vast amount of prerequisite cost prevents small-medium companies from being environmental friendly. Even so, the Showcase promise to do its best for the environment and run the business GOOD for society.
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Fergus Storrier, Founder
Showcase the Street was established in 2003 to bring dance and the arts to young people in areas of deprivation and rural isolation. Since this time it has grown to include community dance classes in 7 local authority areas, project based work which engages with young people at risk of exclusion and not reaching educational attainment by using dance, sport and fashion as a tool.