Unique workshops support resilience for young Queenslanders
- 8 Jun 2023
It’s no joke – laughter is the best medicine when it comes to developing key social-emotional skills through the arts.
What
Funny business took on a whole new meaning when Homunculus Theatre Co. delivered resilience training through laughter workshops and artist-in-residence programs for primary and secondary school students, teachers, and community members across North Queensland.
The company developed a transformative resilience Laughter Workshop and Artist-in-Residence Program based around joy, laughter, and empathy as a means of self-expression and strength.
Driven by the underlying belief that the arts contribute significantly to social-emotional skills development, Homunculus Theatre Co. resilience workshops helped participants explore and discover communication through gestures, movement, and comic timing.
The workshops encouraged participants, in a supportive environment, to embrace differences and activate their creativity using laughter as a tool to engage and connect.
Following the workshops, teachers were given associated educational resources so they could continue spreading the workshops’ benefits within their school communities.
When and where
Touring workshops between February – August 2022
Townsville, Cairns, Ayr, Ingham, and Mt Isa
Key stats
- 5 locations
- 21 schools engaged
- 1305 student participants
Arts Queensland investment
$22,255 supported through Touring Queensland Fund.
The Touring Queensland Fund supports regional community access to quality arts and cultural events and products through the delivery of touring arts and cultural experiences in a range of places including halls, libraries, galleries, performing arts, venues, schools, and non-traditional spaces within and across Queensland communities.
Outcomes
- Activated Queensland’s places and spaces: Presenting the Resilience Workshops in Townsville, Cairns and Mt Isa opened up a fantastic regional Queensland hub. It consolidated an excellent partnership for the company in Far North Queensland moving forward into 2023 and beyond.
- Drove social change and strengthened communities: Through collaboration with artists, a 53 page document was developed. The Free Resilience Through Laughter Resource & Provocation for students, teachers and teaching artists had an extremely positive effect. Most teacher feedback has spoken to the fact of the visual aspect of the resource and how much it goes into depth - unpacking multiple avenues and examples of comedy they had not been exposed to.
Learnings and reflections
- Arts in Education can be hard to market, so a case needs to be made based on impacts and outcomes such as joy, laughter, and empathy as a means of self-expression and strength.
- Arts in Education is not just for drama students and teachers, opportunities to engage in these workshops should be promoted to students and teachers no matter the subject of study.
Feedback
“Clint [Bolster] energises the students from the very start with laughter and makes them feel comfortable with sharing and partaking in activities. Often, we have students who can find performance quite daunting, but I see their confidence develop as the session progresses and they embrace a new and positive way of thinking and working” – Teacher from participating school.
“The Year 7s enjoyed the energy of the session and an opportunity to have fun with characters and performance in general. I had some very positive feedback with the Year 8/9 students, particularly about the silence activity (some of them really enjoyed the challenge that came with it.) The Years 10/11/12 students had a very enjoyable Friday afternoon with their highlight being the mask work.” – Teacher from a participating school.
What next?
Homunculus Theatre Co. offers a wide range of Australian curriculum-linked primary and secondary in-schools workshops, performance, artist-in-residence programs, show-doctoring and professional development for teachers. Their 2023 program season is available now.