Mother Nurture

Steve Pratt talks to Carol Alevroyianni, a photo-journalist from the North-East who’s helping put the festival together.

CAROL Alevroyianni’s got talent. An abundance of it, as both a photo-journalist and a development manager. But the talents of other people – more precisely, young people – are what she wants to put in the spotlight in Shine.

Given the vast amount of publicity surrounding Britain’s Got Talent on television, you can’t help but imagine she’s helping organise a talent show of her own. She is, although it lacks the cynicism and commercialism that accompanies the Simon Cowell TV show.

Shine is a week-long national schools festival celebrating the talents of young people across the country.

This time the event is, she’s pleased to report, “bursting out of the classroom” and on course to top the 10,000 events and one million participants who took part last year.

Events won’t happen solely in schools, but in a variety of locations.

In the North-East, schools from across the Tees Valley are making radio clips for BBC Radio Tees while pupils at Hilton Primary School, Newcastle, are going off timetable for a week to do a range of different activities. A seaside theme is being adopted at Greenfield School Community and Arts College, Newton Aycliffe, with the delivery of two tonnes of sand helping towards creating the right atmosphere for Punch and Judy puppet-making, seaside soundscapes and the creation of giant seahorses.

THE Summer Café Sci at Newcastle’s Centre for Life will find young people from across the region celebrating running their school Cafes Sci with a topical discussion on Swine Flu: panic or pandemic?

“What Shine is all about is young people’s talents – and not just in the classroom, but right across the board,” says Alevroyianni, Shine’s development manager, who became involved with the last year’s festival through Creative Partnerships, the government’s creative learning programme.

“Talent is the only natural resource we have in this country and you can’t have a situation where young people’s talent is not picked up and nurtured, whether it’s playing tennis or just being good at maths,” she says.

“Shine is not like a traditional festival where you programme big things and make it happen. We know there are a lot of fantastic things happening in schools, but wanted to create an umbrella and have a moment in the year where we can focus on all those good things.”

Shine is “an empty vessel to put things in”, as she sees it. “We are celebrating and also creating a moment where young people are shown in a positive light.”

Alevroyianni was inspired by hearing Lucy Parker, chair of the Talent and Enterprise Task Force at the Department of Children, Schools and Families, outline her vision for Shine.

“I was so moved by what she was saying and thought it was such a great idea, and had a lot of ideas about how we could make that happen in a hurry. I threw my hat in the ring and was invited to help. It was meant to be short term, but I gave up my role with North Tyneside Council to carry on with Shine.”

Born in Morpeth, Alevroyianni grew up in Cullercoats with a drummer father who was interested in jazz.

Her own first thoughts directed her towards being an artist. She went to college in Stoke where she discovered a passion for photography. Her thesis was on war photography, notably Vietnam.

A meeting with famous photographer Terence Donovan and Associated Press picture editor Horst Faas led her to go to Europe, to start work as a photographer.

“I had a relative living in Greece, so went there. I felt very Victorian as I arrived at Associated Press with my letter of introduction. They helped me find a job in an advertising agency,” she says.

“Then I started to meet people from newspapers and they were kind of exciting times. No one else was really covering Europe for the national newspapers in this country.

“I’ve been lucky my whole working life, I’ve met fascinating people who’ve opened doors for me.”

Alevroyianni may have started out wanting to be a painter but never felt let down by photography. “It was just magic. I know people talk about being in a darkroom and seeing their pictures appear in the chemical bath, but it really is great. And I can do more with photographs than paintings.

“I’ve always thought I could change the world, that I was on a mission.

Vietnam and Watergate were going on at the time and it seemed to me photography and photo-journalism were capable of exposing things.

“I thought I wanted to be a war photographer or on the cutting edge of what was happening.”

Alevroyianni has a camera with her all the time, accumulating a large collection of photographs over the year. She’s currently putting together an exhibition for Alnwick Gardens.

She met her now-ex husband John while in Greece and, when she became pregnant, she returned to the North-East and began working for North Tyneside Council. She has two sons, Alex, 22, who’s a photographer and Nik, 21, a musician.

Later, her projects with Creative Partnerships included staging Blaze, an opera about the railways with 700 young people, at Darlington’s Railway Museum.

She seems the perfect person to pitch Shine with her love of art and creativity. “When I was a kid, you were meant to choose what you studied for GCSE and A-levels, to narrow down and specialise. But I’ve always wanted to keep the doors open,” she says.

■ Shine Week runs from July 6-10.

More details on shineweek.co.uk