This week is Children’s Mental Health Week and we caught up with our Head of Learning Jo Wright, to discuss the importance of arts and creative for young people’s well-being and the work the team have been doing with our Student Ambassadors.

I’ve spent the day with some of our Student Ambassadors, who are aged 7-11. They visit the Hippodrome three times across the academic year to explore the arts, why they matter to young people, their schools and the world, and to learn how to advocate for them. Fittingly, today has been about their personal development and the leadership skills that they might need to make change. A fantastic range of qualities has been suggested; kindness, empathy, equality, determination, and resilience appear over and over on their examples of good leadership. The moment that makes the day is when each of them reads out a post-it note of their own best qualities, suggested by the other children in their group. Being able to say “you’re kind, clever and you think of others – did you know that about yourself? Well now you do”, is really powerful.

The past three years have been some of the most difficult of modern life. We work with 36 schools across Birmingham and the West Midlands in our Hippodrome Education Network (HEN) and when our theatre building was forced to close, the work we do in schools continued, first digitally and then in person. Our team of Learning & Participation Artists continued to work in school with the children of key workers and online with those home schooling.

Drama classes, song writing, work experience, audition coaching, singing and a raft of other arts experiences enlivened difficult and dull days. Now as our children return to school, we could not be more glad to see them and we’re even more aware of the necessity of the arts in their lives. We are supporting academic growth in GCSE classes and A-level performance pieces, fostering transferable workplace skills, working on presentation techniques and performance and evaluation skills with young people in every setting. This is unquestionably important to their return to school life, but even more important is the work we do with every child, in every session. We develop empathy and the ability to see things from another’s point of view.

We introduce essential skills to children who have had three years of Covid schooling (a child in year two this academic year has never had an uninterrupted school year). Things like turn taking, negotiation, standing up in front of a class to speak, or even raising a hand are unfamiliar to some children, and working with a supportive and skilled Learning & Participation Artist to develop those skills has huge impact not only in arts, but across the wider school environment. Building confidence and exploring new ideas in HEN sessions leads to increased curiosity and resilience across the curriculum.

We are privileged to see moments of joy and growth every day, in the classroom and in Birmingham Hippodrome as young people come back through the doors to see world class performance on our stages and to perform themselves. As one of them observed, “it’s so beautiful!” and for us, it really is.