Express Yourself London. - EYL.

ty. These groups will work weekly creating a show that will be performed as they all come together for one night at a London West End theatre. How We Work. We introduce these children to the creative arts world of music dance & visual art. We are a group of six core staff with a wealth of knowledge in our different art discipline, who are experienced professional artists and teachers. Our project enables young people to develop stable relationships with caring professional adult mentors and role models. We offer opportunities for young people to engage in positive interactions with their peers. We will work with the young people on a weekly basis teaching workshops in the creative arts of music, dance, drumming, singing, composition and the visual art of painting, drawing, sculpture, mask making, felting, illustration and more. With the main goal of imparting the knowledge of these skills to enrich and improve their lives. The long-term weekly programming with solid and committed core staff enables Express Yourself London to provide a stability and consistency that is otherwise seldom present in the lives of many of the young people involved. The studio offers a positive and safe environment in which they can express themselves while simultaneously, and importantly, encouraging the building of new relationships and the development of more effective communication skills. EYL Children and of course those with mental health issues, need to be free from their problems in an environment that stimulates all their senses; where they are surrounded by other young people/children who are addressing the same issues through the same mediums. We want our children to feel empowered through the use of creative expression and to have a moment in their lives where they are not focusing on their problems. EYL will make advances to breakdown pre-conceptions about children's and young peoples mental health. Bringing the issues they face to a wider public view. What we are doing now..... Our Eight Week Pilot. In January/February 2016, EYL will run an eight-week pilot project as a mini version of the ten-month project. We will run the same high quality workshops in the creative arts on two days of the week. We will work with three to six groups of children from our demographic: children in the care of CAMHS (Child & Adolescent Mental Health Services), LAC (Looked After Children), and children from the surrounding community. EYL is all about the children - they become agents of their own development. They take on ownership, investment, responsibility, independence and initiative. Essential to the mission of EYL, the young people involved have the creative freedom to influence the outcome of the eight-week pilot, as they will in the full 10-month project.. For the young people of this demographic this will be, for most of them, their first experience working on a regular basis in the creative arts. Because Express Yourself is committed to stability, creativity, and collaboration, we will be working with these children on a wide variety and interesting forms of art, doing our best to expose each group to all of the different disciplines we offer. We will have allocated times for each group to come to their session every week. For this eight-week pilot, the groups will design individual and collaborative visual art pieces that will eventually form a striking three-dimensional set and stage props. The performance side of these workshops also evolves organically, initiated by what the children feel most comfortable doing and would like to perform. In all instances the teaching methodology will be to encourage creative vision and lend structure to the young people’s inspiration. Our collective background in the various arts combined with our extensive experience of teaching young people means that we have the flexibility and expertise to be able to embrace and develop any ideas that participants have. In addition we will have some set pieces - an EYL African Drumming group and also some specialized Stomp-like workshops to create a junk band as part of the performance finale. The theme for our eight-week pilot will be decided by the young people involved during the first week of the workshops as part of the introduction and orientation phase that also serves as an invitation to the participants to co-create. After the first week of workshops we will be working with the set timetable. As the Executive Director and head of Performance Arts of Express Yourself London, I draw inspiration from and have reverence for the power of the arts from my twenty years working professionally in this industry. I have learned that creative art is beneficial to all people and that it is a great equalizer. Express Yourself Inc. was founded in Boston, Massachusetts by Paula Conrad and Stan Strickland in 1988. Since then over 2000 young people have benefited from the work Express Yourself does in the community working collaboratively with artists and celebrities such as Blue Man Group, STOMP, Keith Lockhart, the conductor of the Boston Pops and Broadway dancers in a culminating performance at the Wang Theatre, one of the more prestigious theatres in Boston seating over 2500. In 2009 Express Yourself Boston was a winner of the ‘Coming up Taller Award’ which was presented to them by the first lady, Michelle Obama, at a special Ceremony at the White House. The ‘Coming Up Taller Award’ recognises and supports outstanding community arts and humanities programs that celebrate the creativity of America’s young people and provide them with learning opportunities and chances to contribute to their communities. In 2011 they received the Robert F Kennedy Embracing the Legacy Award. I have had the privilege of working with Express Yourself Boston since 2003 and have been greatly inspired by there work.I have spent the past few years (with a break to be full time mummy) adapting and creating partnerships with various organisations to make Express Yourself work in the UK. Thank You for reading! Love Lorraine.