I contacted Mahdlo youth zone in Oldham where we did a small placement with during UNIT X educator last year. They were delighted to hear back from us – and it was really quick to organise running a workshop with the young people there as we had already been through the training requirements and we would only need a short safeguarding top up.
https://www.mahdloyz.org/
We planned a workshop for seniors
We wanted to develop the ‘what makes you feel’ workshop that we did at King David High school.
We decided as Mental health awareness week was approach, to run the session based on discussions on arts for health, and creating a visual representation of our discussions on mental health and challenges that young people are faced with in today’s world.
This workshop was in a youth zone so it’s designed as more of a pop in for young people to engage with for as long as they desire. This was a little tricky, and I prefer delivering a workshop in a whole session, especially when focusing on subjects such as arts for health and mental health. A full session allows you to build a safe space with the participants involved, and work together through conversation, to develop and build up an outcome together. This pop in styled activity works, however it doesn’t allow you to go in depth on the topics, which can miss the purpose of the activity.
AIMS AND OBJECTIVES:
Aims: To imitate an open, young person led conversation on mental health and challenges that young people face. Introduce arts for health, and how we can exchange advice, ideas and support with each other during these challenges and emotions. Create a visual representation of these conversations.
Objectives: To create a visual representation of these conversations – allow the young people to freely use a blank display board and mind map their thoughts and ideas, making connections using threads and pins, leaving comments and advice for other people to read.
This activity resulted in a visual representation of the conversations that took place over the course of the evening.
What did I learn? How can this be developed?
I think it would be a valuable source to add some kind of flash cards into this activity, so the young person picks up a card and that is their focus of discussion, until they pick up the next card.
E.g. Drugs, peer pressure, exams, family …
This may encourage more people to engage with the activity as they don’t have to think on the spot about something to talk about…
During the workshop one of the participants wrote ‘abuse’. We were told in advance that situations may come up that involve difficult situations- which is why having a safeguarding top up training is so important.
The young person then opened up to me and mentioned a very serious situation that they were in regarding knife crime, and I made sure to follow the safeguarding procedure and report this to the head of the department.
This brought up a whole safeguarding procedure which took place:
– I was taken to a room where I had to describe exactly what happened and what I had heard.
-The staff member then reported this to the safeguarding officer.
– They then spoke to the young person about what happened.
-The staff then took me aside to update me on the situation, which is being dealt with correctly.
The staff thanked me, and said “your workshop worked”.
I wasn’t quite sure what they meant by that… They explained to me that because the workshop was discussing mental health and different situations and challenges a young person may deal with, it brought up issues within this young person which they wanted to discuss. This young person is now going to get the support they require, all thanks to the safe space that he felt he could open up in.
This situation has never happened to me before, and it was a real learning experience which I have learnt from, and I hope to be better prepared for if this happens again.
Going back to the safeguarding training – it’s important to tell young people that if they open up about something that can be of a concern, I will have to pass the information on to another member of staff. In this situation I froze, and I didn’t manage to tell the young person this as he had left soon after opening up. The safeguarding officer reassured me that it was fine, and it doesn’t always work out in the most ideal way. However, in future I realise it is appropriate to mention at the beginning of a workshop that ‘any information that you share that is concerning, I will have to pass it on…’ just so everyone is clear with communication from the start.
I am so grateful for the top up safeguarding training, otherwise I feel this situation would have caught me off guard.
Images from the safeguarding top up:
Exploring Arts For Health 
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