The Creating Change project aimed to inspire young boys through the use of dance, drama and music to channel their energy, skills and talent in a purposeful direction. Change can come about in numerous ways but the catalysts for change - desire, need, inspiration, direction and purpose - remain constant.
The essential ingredient to ignite this journey is enjoyment and engagement and this was our focus when planning and co-ordinating the project.
Over an entire academic year, Creating Change targeted 60 boys (20 boys each term) aged 12 to 15 across three secondary schools in Doncaster.
Over five weeks two groups of 20 boys were able to work with a professional artist in either dance, music or drama and the Advanced Skills Drama Teacher (AST) for the local authority.
The groups developed many skills, including listening, co-operation, decision-making, designing, risk taking, solving problems, co-ordination, story telling, writing and presentation.
When young people have a positive role model in any aspect of their life it has a positive influence on them. When young people have a positive role model of the same sex this influence is greater.
For this reason the artists throughout this project were male, and they worked in partnership to deliver the project with the AST Lucy Pond. However peer support is also vital and therefore a section of the project also involved peer mentoring.
The artists and the AST not only delivered in the school for five weeks but afterwards spent additional time there meeting with a key representative from each school to ensure that the benefits of the project were embedded in some aspect of school life, with the hope of developing the peer mentoring that was established at the end of the project.