After the morning brief, we went to our first workshop, Violence against Women and Girls, provided by Heavy Pencil Training. This workshop had actors who were portraying a girl who had rumours spread about her which could have potentially ruined her life; a boy who was jealous of someone else and wanted to ruin her life; and lastly, another boy who wanted to stop his friend from doing the wrong thing but didn’t know how to without ruining his friendship. We talked to all the characters about how they were feeling about the situation they were in and helped them make the right decision through something called forum theatre. We explored the relationship between the parent and child and how what parents do can change the outcome of a conversation.

After a short break, we moved on to our second workshop, Bullying and Hate Crime. We formed teams of adults and young people and talked about what bullying and hate crime are and whom they could affect. We came to the conclusion that it is quite hard to have an official definition of both, but each team came up with keywords like repetitive and a one-time thing, physical, emotional, verbal, and how one is a criminal offence. Afterwards, we read different scenarios and talked about how each character might be feeling.

After lunch, we had our third session, Exploitation and Reporting. We were given a video brief about the topic, then split into two groups, with the first group using VR headsets and the other talking about how to report exploitation and how it might make us feel and be different both internally and externally towards others. We discussed how someone might change when they are being exploited while thinking about how they might have new expensive items, and how they might behave differently, such as snapping at people more frequently than usual. These thoughts were put on a diagram of a person on paper. Next we used the headsets. The storyline was a girl getting a text from a guy she didn't know online, and she started frequently talking with them and meeting up with them. This led on to those ‘friends’ of his forcing the girl to sell drugs and paying her a lot of money. She started missing school frequently, while her best friend did not know what was happening. The final scene of her best friend coming to the girl's room to confront her, showed how the girl had changed, such as her music tastes, the posters on the wall, new clothing and jewellery and her being extra secretive about her items.

Between sessions, we were able to visit stalls run by different organisations, such as the NHS, Thames Valley Police, No. 5, Olly’s Work and Young Voices. It was an opportunity to speak with a variety of people and their different fields of work.  We were also able to participate in some short activities at different stalls. 

Roundtable Discussion – Bringing Thoughts Together: During this short discussion, we briefly recollected all the topics covered during the day. These were put onto a mind map of different questions such as ‘how adults could help with wellbeing both at home and at school’. We also discussed what changes could be implemented at Kendrick when talking about sensitive topics. This allowed us to come up with different solutions to the challenges that were being faced.

Towards the end of the day, there was a short Q and A panel where we asked professionals about what they could do to make young people's lives better and more questions related to the day.

To conclude, we really enjoyed this experience and found it insightful. The virtual reality experience was immersive, and the forum theatre experience brought a real-life situation to life.   We learnt how to spot signs of when someone might be in trouble and how to help our peers if required. We discussed what the adults in our lives could do differently to help us learn more about these challenges. And lastly, we discussed how to take this experience forward and help make a difference in our own community at Kendrick.

By Anika and Ananya, Year 9