The art of queuing

If asked what they were waiting for, they replied: "Happiness." When staff at the shop door implored them to come inside, they stood resolute. "Is it a sale?" asked one passer-by. "Is it Piers Morgan?" asked another, worryingly. Then three wealthy shoppers actually joined the end of the line. I asked one of them what she was queuing for. "I don't know," she smiled.

As if on cue, the youngsters' mobile phones — all set to a prearranged signal – went off. They dispersed, leaving the crowd amused yet mystified, then reunited around the corner at the Royal Academy Schools on Burlington Gardens to exult. "Brilliant," they shouted. "Fantastic." "It was exciting," said 22-year-old Ryan Murray, from Southwark. "I didn't know how long we could sustain it."

Ryan is unemployed but has worked as a volunteer at Tate Britain for four years with the gallery's youth forum, and he'd like to make a career of it. The Louis Vuitton Academy is perfect for young people such as him interested in art, or as an introduction to the arts world for those who might otherwise find no way into it.

The group for this year's pioneering scheme were drawn from the youth programmes run by Tate and five other institutions — the Hayward, Whitechapel, Royal Academy and South London galleries — and given once-in-a-lifetime access to people and places they might not otherwise see. Already this week they've been to the Tate's archive and the National Theatre's costume and prop store. They've chatted with Oscar-winning costume designer Ruth Myers and Evening Standard art critic Ben Luke.

Today, they are meeting the people who build Anish Kapoor's giant sculptures. On Friday, they will create photographic portraits of actors Clive Rowe, Amanda Root and Julian Rhind-Tutt to be displayed at the LV Maison later this year and published in Dazed and Confused's December issue. There's also, naturally, a website.

Yves Carcelle, chairman and CEO of Louis Vuitton, sees "transmitting savoir-faire and creativity" as a cornerstone of the brand, and says the Academy "seeks to instil and nurture an exploration, enjoyment and passion for the arts among young people which they can take into adult life and perhaps follow as a career". For the American-born, London-based artist Jessica Voorsanger, who is running this year's week-long programme, it's about breaking down barriers.
Some of the kids on the Academy have never been far from the estates around the South London Gallery. There are swaggering young men and girls in headscarves. "I was most worried about the age range," says Voorsanger, "but they all got on immediately, and the older students have been bringing the younger ones on."

Certainly, the atmosphere in the rooms they've occupied at the Royal Academy is raucous and genial. In the Academy's historic life drawing room, Ryan Valentine, "17 in three weeks" and from Peckham, is posing in an antique dress next to a plaster statue of a flayed horse. His best mate's sister Nadine Johnson, 14, poses him in the attitude of a 17th century Artemisia Gentileschi portrait and takes photographs.

Nadine's dad is unemployed but her mum volunteers at the South London Gallery, and the week's activities have left Nadine keen to improve her photography and "quite interested in performance art". Shahriah Doha is 16 and from Stepney, the son of an Indian restaurant manager: he says the week has fed his hopes of being an architect. Anjuli Douglas, 19, from Finchley, the daughter of a retired banker and a sociologist mother, is about to start an English degree at Goldsmiths. She feels the Louis Vuitton academy has introduced her to "so many careers I didn't know about, connected with art".

For me, it was amazing and heartening to see this disparate group muck in together. The LV Academy engages them in art but also in each other. Voorsanger sprang the idea of the intervention on them but in 10 minutes they had devised and seamlessly executed an art-stunt that was, in her words, was "positive and joyous and very gentle". Or, as the youngsters might have put it: "Brilliant!"