When a student comes to Greenbank College, the aim is to teach them the skills they need to be successful in their chosen career and the workplace. However, this isn’t just about learning practical and theoretical work-based skills. Nurturing personal development also plays an important part in getting students ready to move into employment. To enable us to do this, we offer enrichment as part of the Study Programme.

Personal development through enrichment sessions

Our enrichment programme is designed to promote personal development by helping students to:

• build their self esteem
• discover their identity
• improve self-awareness
• improve confidence and social skills
• develop team building skills

Drama enrichment sessions 

One of the enrichment activities that was on offer in the summer term was drama. The session was led by Aleesha Neill who is on a placement from LIPA as part of her Applied Theatre and Community Drama degree. The project aimed to encourage participation in theatre and drama activities to increase confidence and consider identity, which are both great for improving the personal development of students. They have worked together for the last 11 weeks which concluded with a short performance and sharing of work to a small audience. 

Discovering ‘identity’ for personal development

The project was based around the question of ‘What makes you You?’. Each week the groups explored different questions based on identity. They have been encouraged to talk about themselves and what makes them unique as well as what can bring them together as a group. They have explored what they enjoy doing, what represents them shared their thoughts about ‘Who am I?’, ‘Who will my future self be?’ and ‘What do we want to say to the world?’.

Each session consisted of drama games and exercises that they can do together as a group as well as a chance for everyone to show back the work that they have produced in the workshop. They have looked at still images, music, rhythm, mime as well as what colours, animals and superheroes they could be. The groups have also been creating puppets to use for shadow puppetry and look at how music can be used in their final performances.

One of the activities that they took part in each week was to think of ‘One thing that made you happy today’ and ‘One thing you want to say to the world’. Their responses were put into a jar to be shared during the performance. Here are some of their responses:

One thing that made you happy today

One thing you want to say to the world

Aleesha said:

“The students have fully engaged with the workshops and have grown in confidence each week. I have enjoying working with both groups of students, they have been incredibly welcoming to me and are funny, creative and enjoyable to work with. The students have hopefully discovered more about themselves and as a group have learnt more about each other. “

Student, Mia said:

“I enjoyed making the puppets and writing the little notes every week. My favourite part of the performance was the puppetry and reading out about myself to share with the group. It gave me more confidence and I made friends with people I wouldn’t normally meet in college.”

Learn more about what is included in our Study Programmes