In 2018 our Participation Director, Emily Eversden, left her position as a secondary school drama teacher to re-join Tangled Feet (after previously co-founding TF in 2003). In her 15-year teaching career Emily has seen and experienced the pressures, politics and dynamics of in-school education, and having educated hundreds of children, Emily identified an urgent and growing need to offer supplementary support to children who were struggling with depression and anxiety at key transition ages. The support required was not part of the national curriculum, and schools have little or no budget (nor time) to help children with these needs – meaning children are falling behind through no fault of their own. This need has also been highlighted in many reports on the mental health of young people.
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.