This week is Mental Health Awareness Week and at Jump Studios, we have been incorporating mental health into our programme of after-school sessions throughout the entire of our last term and as we are in the opening stages of this term, we thought this week would be a good opportunity to revisit the theme.
We engaged with the theme by using games before designing and creating things that are associated with the young people’s reflections on mental health.
Based on the 5 steps of Mental Health and Wellbeing, we began sessions with a physical warm-up where the group intentionally walked around outside ‘Taking Notice’ of their breathing and their senses.
One-by-one, we introduced the other 4 steps.
When the word ‘Give’ was called out, the young people gestured to one another and gave each other a smile. When the word ‘Connect’ was called out they would walk up to the person closest to them and touch elbows. When ‘Be Active’ was called the young people did a star jump and for ‘Keep Learning’ they made a gesture to symbolise learning.
This exercise gave the young people a moment of their day to reflect and connect with themselves and their friends.
The theme continued into our sessions as they design and created projects based on Mental Health.
We have frequently found that the topic of mental health is always well received and treated with complete seriousness and maturity by the young people of Jump Studios, which is an exciting prospect to know that the next generation are so in touch with a topic that has potentially been neglected in the past.
We look forward to continuing this theme throughout the work we do with the young people at Knowle West Media Centre.
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