Over five hundred primary school children in Belfast will benefit from a new arts education programme over three years, designed to build their resilience. Young at Art, Northern Ireland’s leading arts provider for children and young people and home of the annual Belfast Children’s Festival, has been awarded funding from Paul Hamlyn Foundation to deliver its Resilient Child programme in six primary schools across Belfast beginning in October this year.
Eibhlin de Barra, Director of Young at Art, explained how the programme will work:
“Resilience – the ability to overcome challenges – is a fundamental aspect of children’s social and emotional well-being. The children we work with often have complex family and home lives, reliance on food banks, apprehension about the future, climate change anxiety, unstable and inappropriate housing conditions, racism, fear of attacks and newcomer children can experience difficulties integrating into Northern Irish society.
“Resilient Child is a child-centred, process-based arts education programme, co-designed with teachers, artists and children. This very welcome funding from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, allows us to build on previous work and is a significant step forward for us in how we can support children’s social and emotional well-being.
“For Young at Art resilience isn’t simply about having a ‘thick skin’, we view it as a comprehensive toolkit of social and emotional skills that empower children to navigate life’s challenges. A resilient child will be one who can express their ideas with confidence, talk about and manage difficult emotions, cope well in different situations, empathise with others, and feel that their voice makes a difference.”
Participating schools are located in some of the most deprived areas of Northern Ireland with significant segregation of Catholic and Protestant children, and newcomer children, as a percentage of total pupils, ranges from 16% to 85%. During the programme, each class will receive up to ten artist led visual arts and drama sessions each year, visits to one of Belfast’s arts venues during Belfast Children’s Festival and ‘building on’ sessions, co-created by teachers, artists and Young at Art to increase overall classroom creativity.
This is the second time that Young at Art has received funding from Paul Hamlyn Foundation, having previously been a beneficiary of its Teacher Development Fund.
