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Kazzum Arts are a trauma-informed arts charity based in East London. Kazzum’s communications and training coordinator, Kitty Harris, explains how, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the team developed animations and creative activities which use mindfulness to support children and young people’s wellbeing.
At Kazzum Arts, we use creativity to enable children and young people who have been impacted by trauma and adversity to feel seen, heard and valued. Our creative workshops are delivered in partnership with hospitals, refugee charities and education settings, and use multidisciplinary approaches including visual arts, drama, music, dance and creative writing.
In 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic was causing a national mental health crisis, we looked to mindfulness as a method to support the wellbeing of the children and young people on our programmes during a time of social distancing. As we were unable to go into workshop settings to deliver our creative wellbeing workshops, we designed regulating, wellbeing animations to be sent directly to young people through text message, gif or email. These ‘Grounded’ animations were complemented by a series of online creative activities and colouring-in books.
See Kazzum Arts’ Grounded animations>>
Mindfulness has grown in popularity over the past few years as a way to boost mental wellbeing. It has its beginnings in spiritual practice and uses techniques such as deep breathing and clearing the mind to achieve a state of calm. Whilst it has roots in spirituality, recently mindfulness has been adopted in Western societies as an everyday method for relaxation and regulation. There are many reported benefits to mindfulness, for example the reduction of symptoms associated with panic disorders, and lowered levels of anxiety (source).
We initially designed our short animations for young people on our Build project, which worked with participants aged 13-16 excluded from mainstream education. Each animation explores one of four broad themes: mindfulness, relationships, movement and relaxation. The activities they model are trauma-informed; supporting social engagement, a well-balanced autonomic nervous system and playful approach to wellbeing.
The pupil referral unit staff members from our Build project provided the voiceovers for the animations, building a sense of creative connection and relationship in contrast with the social distancing rules in place at the time. The characters reflect the diversity of our community and encourage everyone to take part in a wellbeing journey.
Once the animations were created, we then went through the additional process of translating each one into French, Vietnamese, Arabic and Pashto – four languages which are commonly spoken across the communities that we reach on our Pathways programme (which supports refugee, asylum seeking and undocumented young people). Feedback from our partners revealed that the translations removed language barriers to wellbeing opportunities for young people and their families during a very stressful time.
As time has moved on from the pandemic and normal workshops have resumed, we have used these same mindfulness animations in a range of projects, from schools to hospital wards to training workshops for professionals. They are also hosted online and can be accessed for free from our website by anyone who wishes to incorporate them into their workshop facilitation.
A User Guide, which supports participants, professionals and carers to take part in the activities and a Therapeutic Guide created with psychotherapist Jocelyne Quennell, share the therapeutic and spiritual impact of each activity and can also be downloaded online for free.
We hope these animations can be used within workshops and shared more widely to ensure that as many people as possible can benefit from a moment of mindfulness. We love to hear about the impact of this project so share your Grounded stories with us at @KazzumArts on social media.
Access Kazzum Arts’ Grounded animations, including the User Guide and Therapeutic Guide, here>>
Find out more about Kazzum Arts>>
Kitty is communications and training coordinator at Kazzum Arts. She has a BA in Theatre Performance Design from the University of Leeds (2015), and an MA in Illustration from Camberwell College of Arts (2019). She has experience working with children in the UK and abroad, and believes in the importance of the arts as a catalyst for change.
Find out more about Kitty here.
