We took 11 Young Carers to a drama workshop at the Seagull Theatre in Lowestoft for a 2 hour session.
Ashleigh our coach eased us into the session with warm up games, easing the young carers to leave their comfort zone and getting to know each other better. We had great fun miming and trying our hand at different accents, this was met with lots of giggles. Using the devising method the group came up with little 1 minute stories based on real life events and acted them out, once performed, they had to adapt the characters to be something in the fantasy realm, we saw fictional characters, mythical ones and a couple of superheroes too. This was a great exercise, we saw a difference in confidence in some of our young carers from one sketch to the other. When playing well known characters we saw a different side to young carers and the confidence beamed out of them, compared to when they were playing a character they had imagined. We finished the session with the penguin game which they all loved, it was met with shouts of ‘why is this so fun’
One particular young carer was anxious about coming, as this was his first event with us. He had spoken to his advisor Katie and school about it. You could see they were a bit nervous on arrival, but soon got stuck straight in and from then you could not tell they were anxious at all. Due to this their Young Carer Lead from school also popped in to see how they were getting on, a true testament to the lead and the commitment to their young carers.
Ashleigh was a great encourager for all abilities and pitched the session perfectly allowing all ages and confidence levels to engage at their own pace. This was great as we saw each young carer participate and although some showed signs of shyness, by the end of the session they were all performing brilliantly. Overall, you could see the confidence beaming out of many of the young carers, the feedback we received from the session was great and showed that this sort of activity is great for young carers, some even signed up for more information about the drama classes that the Seagull run themselves.
