From September Bradford Cathedral Education will be offering Wellbeing sessions for schools as an addition to its usual programme of educational visits.
When “normal life” resumes in the months and academic year following the aftermath of the pandemic, children and young people will need opportunities to reflect upon their feelings and experiences of the early days and weeks of the Covid-19 pandemic, the long months of the first lockdown, the sporadic return to school for some before the summer, the return to school for the autumn term with the massive changes and disruption to school “everyday” life, the national lockdown again in early 2021 and the uncertain period we are currently living through.
As well as the collective experience of the global pandemic, they will also all have their own personal and family experiences and worries, which many will have been carrying with them- perhaps unacknowledged and unspoken- for a very long period of time.
Our wellbeing workshops focus on the thoughts and feelings generated by these experiences in the lives of our children and young people, with a physical journey around 4 stations set out in different areas of the Cathedral, dealing with:
Worries and Burdens; Sadness, Loss and Remembrance; Strengths and Thankfulness; Hope and Moving Forward.
At each station there will be a focus for reflection and an activity. The pupils will ideally spend around 20 minutes at each station. The activity will involve them “laying down” or “leaving” something at the station.
Each session will begin with a moment of “space” and physical separation spread out in the nave of the Cathedral before the pupils make their journey in small groups around the stations; it will end with a “coming together” once again in the nave and a final act of sharing involving the whole group.
