Exploring Young People’s Heroes & Villains

Joining Stories, Lottery Community Fund Project

We only have a couple of sessions left of our first Joining Stories program. We have been exploring childhood heroes and Villains/Monsters with a lovely, creative group of Young People.

The Lottery funded project runs for a year as a series of programs for young people age 18 to 25 in deprived urban areas of Norwich who currently experience (or are at risk of experiencing) loneliness, isolation and their associated effects on wellbeing.

We have seen a real range of heroes from family pets, Gaming characters, 1970’s Anime to warriors straight out of Classical Greek literature.

Our villains and monsters have been just as diverse. We explored these using a mixture of research and Proceesswork exercises: Lying on the floor being a prawn in sick with one participant was a real unexpected pleasure!

It was fascinating to watch the Processwork techniques unfold more secondary associations, really opening new ways of exploring the material. it seemed to tap into creative ideas that some didn’t even believe they had.

We found energetic patterns and deeper meaning in these Heroes and Villains which the participants are weaving (one quite literally) into their designs for their ethically sourced T-shirts.

I also suspect the participants have found new allies to take home in pockets and glimpses of superpowers they already had but hadn’t quite stood in fully yet.

We will be using the last two sessions to get the participants designs ready for print. I am super excited to see their designs on their T-Shirts!