Throughout the module social context, I completed my placement with converge, a centre at York St John university who offer courses, majority being arts courses, to those who are mental health users. This was put in place to give those who suffer with mental health more educational opportunities; showing them the different opportunities that are out there for them as individuals. The placement lasted over 4 weeks, with adults aged 18 and above. There are two different groups in converge, in the moment and out of character. I worked with in the moment who were beginners. Rather than creating drama surrounding participants mental health, the goal was to go against that and not focus on that aspect of there life. This was something to appreciate as it meant there main focus was creating a perfromance.
Over the 4 weeks, we looked at different historical characters. Each participant got to pick their own, including myself, and this was our focus in creating a performance. Throughout this experience I felt like I was more apart of converge then facilitating it as I got to join in all the activities with the participants. We would undergo different drama games, which I found very enjoyable as it helped to break the ice and become more comfortable around each other. Each week, the lead facilitator would organise different workshop activities that were based around our stimulus. For example, in one of the weeks we used our chosen historical characters and created a pitch of why we should be able to come back to life. This was a key moment in my experience with converge; I saw each participant take their own initiative and really get themselves into there chosen character. This was also a turning point as this became the main storyline of th performance.
In week 4 me and my peer facilitated half of the session; I was very nervous to do so as I had never properly facilitated this group before. However, we had got to know the participants quite well, so they were very open and supportive to each activity we wanted to do with them. I found this to be a totally different experience compared to working with the students at Winifred Holtby academy as I had never facilitated a group of adults before. This built my confidence massively; teaching me to take a leadership role working with adults.
Working with mental health users really made it clear that this was the kind of field in facilitating that I would really like to focus on. I enjoyed the aspect of not focusing on the mental health but the kind of theatre that they wanted to create. Mental health is something that I have had experience with; so, working with these participants was something that felt important to me. As well as giving me the experience that I needed in my journey of becoming a drama therapist, I have really become invested in being apart of helping a community to realise that there are opportunities there for them This has been an experience that really inspired me and cemented that I want to specialise in facilitating mental health users through drama workshops.