How it works/ How we know it works

We devise, write, present and perform themed workshops. We evaluate, dissect, analyse and disseminate to our partners all the good things this feedback provides. We are never complacent. We evolve by means of a virtuous circle: Workshop; Feedback from professionals, participants, peers and partner organisations; incorporate into future workshops; Workshop

Each workshop is in 4 parts:

Drugs Workshop

(i) Performance of an original stage play. “Bye Bye Barbie”. Set in a cell in a Police Station, a young heroin addict has just been arrested for the umpteenth time for shoplifting. She didn’t know that when she lit up a cannabis cigarette at the age of 12, in a short time she would be sleeping in a filthy tent outside Primark. Very powerful and moving.

(ii) Actors stay in character and take questions.

(iii) Role Play. Inter-active. Members of the audience are given roles. A neighbour whose house has been burgled, or whose car has been stolen confronts the ‘the thief’. Very lively.

(iv) Guest Speaker: Police Officer, Probation Officer or Health Professional.

Delivery, either conventional or dramatically, ie our actors haranguing them. VERY IMPORTANT NOTE: The content of the speaker always takes priority.

The format for the alcohol and domestic violence workshops are the same, though with different stage plays: ‘Whiskey Whiskey’, a dysfunctional family persecuted by a money-lender, and whose lives are dominated by alcohol. The material was commissioned by Merseyside Probation Service, with material provided by young men whom the courts had adjudged had alcohol as a significant component in their offending.

‘Bright Colours Only’. A play written with material provided by women in a refuge who had experienced abuse in a domestic setting.

All three plays have won many awards, and have been performed hundreds of times. All the material is true which gives an added resonance.

What do the workshops look like

Mental Health – How we all feel compromised at times. Scenarios, how to deal with adverse ones, how not to self-medicate with drugs and alcohol.

Addiction – The mechanics, how it retains control displacing everything worthwhile. We invite recovering addicts to relate their own case-histories and how to devise a personalised road map.

Example of Workshop activity – A young woman in a Bail Hostel couldn’t read. We enrolled her with one of our partner literacy organisations and she is now a Librarian. Another resident was innately funny, we coached and directed her and she is now a stand-up comedienne in her home town (not Liverpool).

We will dramatise 3 or 4 others in this module.