Research shows that lack of social skills, especially amongst young people can lead to risky and antisocial behaviour.
We have had great success with young people who have been excluded from school. Improvement to their behaviour and social skills is vastly improved after accessing the project and in fact has led to most participants return to mainstream school.
We are now repeatedly invited in to Schools in Bradford to run our workshops and we continue to see positive results in the young people in terms of social skills, communication and intercultural eduction. One school said that the workshops stimulated the concentration and cognition of their Special Educational Need pupils, leading to a higher scoring mark in numeracy and higher work rate.
“The level of engagement and stimulation was total, and the follow-up artwork which many children produced was the evidence of the impact the day had on their understanding and creativity.”
Headteacher - Bradford school
Some of the pupils expressed their thanks and appreciation through writing, and others used pictures to communicate. The pictures indicated that the workshop stimulated their hieroglyphic skill like that of the ancient Egyptians. The pictures depict our workshop leader facilitating the drumming and dancing; they depict the music outfit he wore including grass skirt They invented symbols that depict the high and low sound coming from the drum and footsteps that dance in tune to the high and low sound. Some of them even created signs that depicts the environment and weather condition of the day.
Developing life-skills is not restricted to young people, it is also valuable to the elderly. In the images above, one can see the elderly showing their drumming and dancing skills. In addition, their writing skills were improved, leading to their taking part in evaluation and writing down feedback from the project.
