Supporting Young Minds: Update on Oxfordshire’s ‘Feeling Safe’ programme

Part of our Supporting Young Minds investment programme, Oxfordshire Cultural Education Partnership’s Feeling Safe Project aims to deliver therapeutic arts activity for young people in both formal and informal settings in order to build a solid foundation prior to key transition years.

Divided into three strands, the Feeling Safe Project will create cultural and arts activity to support young people returning to school and in-person activity following the Covid-19 pandemic, to develop confidence, resilience and support positive mental health.

Artswork’s Ruth Taylor, Strategic Manager for Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Milton Keynes, gives an update on how the project is going so far, based on an interim report from Oxfordshire CEP.

Strand 1: Schools programme with young people in Year 5, Year 7/8 and Year 12

The first strand of the Feeling Safe Project is working with a group of local schools on a visual arts project. Schools were asked to explain their current challenges and priorities for taking part in the programme when they applied:

• 81% of schools said their priority was supporting positive mental health for young people
• 58.6% said improving resilience
• 44.8% saying improving confidence
• 20.7% saying helping transition back to school

Similarly, when asked what CPD support teachers would need 72.4% said supporting young people’s wellbeing through the arts and 62.1% said supporting young people and their mental health:

Our current needs lie strongly around mental health. We have many children who are struggling with anxiety and general fears and worries that they are not always able to articulate…. We have found that the number of children struggling with their mental health is increasing, especially since the start of the pandemic.

The needs highlighted through the initial expression of interest forms, and consultation with schools and arts organisations, were used to shape the project objectives and become part of a Theory of Change.

As part of the programme, ten schools have had the opportunity to take part in two artist-led sessions. Each workshop incorporated wellbeing and the arts, with two full days allocated to creating visual art. Workshops focused on expressing feelings and organic creativity with the onus on enabling the young people to make what they wanted.

Paintings created through the workshops were submitted to the national Artbytes competition. Both of the South East regional winners were from schools where these workshops had taken place – The Bicester School and Benson Church of England Primary!

A total of 274 young people took part across the ten schools. Of the four schools that had completed both workshops when the report was written, three showed higher average UCL wellbeing umbrella scores after the second workshop. The majority of young people recorded they felt ‘better than before’ after the workshops.

Pupil comments :

‘Today I have the best day it made me have a positive attitude especially because I have been feeling sad. This is the best lesson ever.’

‘I enjoyed everything, it was so much fun. It made me feel very happy and confident in myself.I learnt that you should never give up if you make a mistake, to keep on going. It made me feel very positive.’

Strand 2: Arts partner lead programmes with young people in Year 5, Year 7/8 and Year 12 – in both formal and informal settings

Based on identified needs following consultation with schools, young people, and mental health support services in the county, schools and youth groups have been matched with arts partners to co-create projects that will meet those needs. 

Many of the projects in this strand are now underway, with arts partners including OYAP Trust, Mandala Theatre Company, and weaving artist Cassandra Smith.

Mandala Theatre Company have completed sessions with two different groups of young people.

• The CARE project work with care experienced young people across eight sessions, enabling the young people to have a voice and work together on a film script
• MAD(E) worked with young men, with sessions explicitly focused on young men’s mental health. Thoughts, feelings and ideas discussed in these sessions will be fed back to playwright, Sean Burn, and act as inspiration for a new play.

At the start of the project my mental health could have been better, I felt mistaken and wrong and not having much skill. My mental health now is so much better. I have learnt I am good at spoken word and poetry. I am looking forward to seeing the play when it is made. – MAD€ project participant

Other projects in this strand underway include:

• Sessions from OYAP Trust, working with seven primary-aged children over six sessions
• Weaving artist, Cassandra Smith, is working with yr 8 and 9 pupils
• Film Oxford is working with 12 young people

The involvement of the young people in the design and delivery of all work in this strand will help to build confidence and other skills e.g. leadership, planning, marketing etc. as well as enabling participants to feel part of a team – all of which will help to counter the disempowering impact of the pandemic.

Strand 3: Extension of projects piloted in North Oxfordshire, by North Oxfordshire Cultural Education Partnership, to other areas

This strand involves developing best practice programmes across Oxfordshire with established arts partners.

One of these is Cherwell Theatre Company’s programme of workshops and interactive performances , ‘Sam and Zoe versus Evermore’. Cherwell Theatre Co partnered with Response, an organisation which works to enable people with mental health challenges to live their lives to the full, to run a series of workshops. The company’s evaluator surmised that overall:

All of the students were able to discuss the themes around wellbeing, male mental health, connectedness … resoundingly they felt that discussing mental health in this medium was much more impactful, compared to a talk or an assembly. 

Underpinning all the activity is a programme of CPD for teachers and arts organisations including mental health awareness, mindfulness and art, Arts Award and Artsmark, as well as a mental health First Aid course.

A film is also being produced to capture some of the work.

Ruth Taylor August 2022 taken from ‘OXCEP Feeling Safe: COMF report for activity up to and including March 2022’ and other updates.

This project is part of Artswork’s Supporting Young Minds investment programme – five linked projects taking place across the South East that aims to model best practice in the use of creativity to improve the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people, particularly in disadvantaged communities.