We're making a noise about bullying!
Tie-Dye Drama are making a noise about bullying!
So, you may have noticed that over the past week or so we've been making a lot of noise about bullying!
Ahead of Anti-Bullying Week in November, we've launched an exciting new project to deliver FREE drama workshops to primary and secondary schools on the subject of bullying. The whole reason we created Tie-Dye Drama was to provide opportunities for young people to use drama to explore issues that are important to them. This has, and will always be, the driving force behind our organisation. If drama is to be used to spark personal and social change, then we must ensure we've done our research and that our workshops are about topics that are current and relevant to the young people we work with.
So why bullying?The Children's Society recently found that children in England are more unhappy than those in almost every other country surveyed. This is partly because of the level of bullying and exclusion at school, which is damaging their well-being and affecting the next generation's mental health.Everybody has been affected by bullying in some way; either as the bully, the victim or as a bystander, but these roles are not black and white, and most people will, at some point in their life, play all three.
Bullying is everybody's problem, but, as an incredibly complicated issue, there are no quick fixes or go-to solutions to make it stop.Rather than offering superficial solutions, our workshops will use drama to encourage young people to consider bullying from different perspectives: Why might the bully be acting in this way? How does it feel to be the target of bullying? What role does the bystander play in either perpetuating or helping to change a bad situation?By avoiding creating binary roles or simplistic models of 'good vs bad', the young people taking part in our workshops will be able to step into the shoes of all of the people who might be involved in bullying. Seeing it from a range of perspectives will encourage empathy and a balanced understanding of an issue which is usually represented in extreme terms. Only when given deeper insight will young people begin to connect with the issue.
As well as creating empathy through offering a range of perspectives, our drama workshops will also look at how to recognise and report bullying, both in day-to-day life and online.By exploring real life situations in a supportive environment, the young people we work with will have a chance to build their confidence in facing these situations and in challenging bullying within their own community.
For more information about the project, and how to pledge your support, visit our crowdfunding page: http://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/tie-dye-dramaWatch this space for more updates in the lead up to Anti-Bullying Week 2015.