Response Organisation is a registered charity working across Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire and beyond. From mental health support and accommodation, through to developing young people’s emotional resilience, Response provides multi-layered support at any stage of an individuals’ mental health journey. www.response.org.uk

Drama and Creative Writing workshops at Response with LifewithArt

It was lovely for LifewithArt to return to Response after a couple of years to do some drama and creative writing workshops.  Nice to see some familiar faces but also some new ones that came in.  This was a short project of 3 sessions so it was helpful that the group had already thought of a context and written a scene for a short story about rats!

We were able to read through and use that first scene as a start for the creative writing session.  First the group jotted down all words that came to mind from the reading the passage, and then worked in groups with some of the words to create scenes.  Another exercise we did was write a monologue from the point of view of a rat, and then chopped them up and intersperse them with each other to create a larger piece.

Alongside the writing we looked at Banksy’s work with rats and how he uses them to portray members of society who are downtrodden, rebellious and rejected.  We used a rat stencil to create our own protest signs

All this came together with a sharing the work to a member of staff, at the end of the final session.  The sharing was immersive in nature and took the audience along to different locations, as part of the piece.

COB – I really enjoyed the drama sessions with Diana. It was such good fun.

SMK – Diana was such a good teacher and she made the sessions very interesting . It brought me back to when I was a teenager when I was planning a career on the stage.

PH – The script was well written and entertaining .We were always in control of the direction it was going .I was happy to add my ideas and input.

CF – I cant wait for the next drama sessions with Diana. I can get the chance to express my emotions and feelings .

NK – I got the chance to express myself. I always want to have the lead role to match my bubbly personality. Doing drama lets me become a diva.

We look forward to working with Response again!