Where:  

Primary schools – KS1

Secondary schools and colleges – KS5

Who for: 

Students living with/at risk of living with feelings of anxiety or isolation

The Project:

Tangled Feet (TF) will deliver a ten week 'Mindfulness and Wellbeing Through Theatre' project for up to 20 pupils in your school setting. Participants will be students at important transition stages (Year 1 groups, Year 12 groups) and will be experiencing issues with confidence and anxiety that are impacting negatively on their mental health, and subsequently, their in-school achievements.

Each week, a timetabled activity session led by TF workshop leaders will use, yoga, concentration and mindfulness exercises, dramatherapy activities and drama games to help participants overcome nerves, learn techniques to manage stress, and encourage them to explore their creativity by telling, sharing and performing stories in whatever technique/format works for the individual participant. Using separate funding we have secured from The Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation we will recruit a local young person as an intern on the project, their role will be as Workshop Assistant to support TF's Participation Director to deliver the project.

At the start of the delivery of the project our Participation Director will begin preliminary work with your school to identify pupils to participate on the 10 week programme which will be delivered over the course of this term. The project will be evaluated by TF and the participating schools, and completed by the end of the term of delivery. The schools that take part in the project will all agree to deliver the weekly activity sessions as timetabled sessions - not during lunch hours/after school.   

Evaluation: We will conduct an 'emotional audit' of the participants at beginning, middle, and end of the project - collecting quantitative data that charts the participants feelings of nervousness, anxiety, and confidence on a scale of 1 to 10. With this data we can track the progress being made by the participants and it will help us inform future TF projects of a similar nature. We will re-visit each school to have a debrief session with the participants and teachers and collect their thoughts on what worked well and where the project could be improved in the future.      

Participants will learn skills and coping techniques that help them manage and overcome nerves, low-confidence and anxiety problems that may be having a detrimental impact on their mental health. Using dramatherapy and theatre-making exercises the participants will make new friends, find new levels of confidence, and become emotionally well equipped to tackle the challenges in their immediate futures. They will become ambassadors for positive mental health at their school.

Participating schools and teachers can receive training and will be left with information packs and schemes of work for lesson plans to re-mount the project with other groups of students in the future.  TF evaluate the project to build on the findings and successes by rolling out the project in more schools in the following academic year to help schools achieve the Arts Mark status.

The students will be the primary beneficiaries. We anticipate they will be individuals low on confidence, experiencing nerves and anxiety in their daily lives, and struggling to cope emotionally with the pressures of school life at two key transition ages. Building confidence to express themselves and learning to problem solve, the participants will find their voices and share stories in a safe and supportive surrounding, taking part in age-specific exercises that can help to clear the mind, focus, relax and concentrate.  We will work with the in-school safeguarding lead to help identify behaviours symptomatic of young people experiencing emotional problems to select the participants.

The schools participating will also benefit, helping to raise awareness of mental health and mindfulness issues amongst students and teachers. TF will be raising awareness about the importance of mindfulness and positive attitudes towards mental health, and we will leave the participating schools with information packs that will enable them to deliver activities from the project. We will help to create and sustain a culture that can support emotional wellbeing of young people, particularly those at transition ages.

We hope the participants will have an understanding that the skills learned in the yoga, mindfulness and theatre practice can have a positive impact on their lives, on whatever path they follow. Participants will learn coping techniques to help them overcome difficult moments in their lives, and learn how to identify if their friends and peers are also struggling with similar problems. Their confidence will increase, and their communication skills will be enhanced - this will have a long-term and positive impact on those taking part.

Email - emily@tangledfeet.com