A few years ago we did a lot of work with the educational psychology services of a County Council around the subject of school bullying. Originally a short term commission to undertake some creative based consultation I challenged the short term premise of the commission and engaged in a two year relationship that had far reaching implications. It began with workshops with over 200 children and young people, through which they came up with ideas for alleviating and dealing with bullying in schools, we also considered bullying in the home and the community, the bullying of and by teachers as well as pupil to pupil. The groups we worked with - each over two days, had conversations and expressed their ideas and experiences through drama, dance, cartoon, model making, writing and music. They also produced survey materials to go out to general consultation. Over 7,000 people replied! New policy was formulated and developed at the County level as a result of this work, new ideas were introduced in schools across the County and…in a very moving moment of advocacy by some of those initial 200 children at a conference attended by experts and concerned authorities nationally, I saw a very senior police officer cry! We heard many stories from the children and many more stories were shared by people responding to the surveys. We shared the remarkable story of one young lady, called Hayley, that many of our friends, and my staff, will remember and whose book we helped to create. Im not a great fan of television and even less so of most entertainment shows but I do find them interesting and useful to watch, from a professional point of view through my job as an arts director and from a reflective point of view both as an artist and as a someone with a background in sociology. I came across this clip on YouTube looking for something else and it brought up a lot of memories - the joy the younger of the two boys now has in going to school is heartwarming - I say that as a former home-schooling parent... OK - its TV - it thrives on stirring emotion through these programmes - I get all the reservations and criticism - but who doesnt thrive to some degree out of making dramas and emotional scenarios out of life? Just watch it for what it is at a human level….forget the money and the razz, and audience figures… https://youtube/watch?v=7ukGsT0QdDE …but do chuckle at the virtual Simon Cowell at the end (after a shave) Im sure hes CGI.
Posted on: Sat, 01 Nov 2014 12:58:04 +0000
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