MADfest with Littleover Community School

On Friday 27 March, the Civic Team supported MADfest at Littleover Community School. MADfest is a half day creative arts festival with year 8 students, themed around resilience, mental health and wellbeing. Over the morning 13 different creative practitioners ran workshops focused on their creative discipline; ranging from creative writing to animation to shadow puppetry. The festival brought together the school’s Creative Arts Faculty, Designing Dialogue CIC, the University of Derby, creative professionals, and wellbeing partners to engage around 300 Year 8 students. The event was supported by local partners including Derby Theatre, Artcore, Baby People, Mayah Khan, Nathan Addai, Small Print Company , Derby Cathedral, Ben Macpherson and Babbling Vagabonds.

Through practical sessions students explored themes of mental health and resilience while gaining meaningful insight into the creative industries and engagement with creative professionals. Working to a shared brief, students produced collaborative creative work that will form part of the school’s wider wellbeing and resilience campaign. Student artwork will also form part of a new resilience hub for students, supported by Bloc Digital.

The festival received overwhelmingly positive feedback, with 91% of students reporting that they enjoyed taking part and almost all stating that they felt supported and inspired by the creative practitioners. 86% of participants felt that they deepened their understanding of resilience and wellbeing through taking part in MADfest. Students also said that the workshops helped them improve other core skills such as organisation, leadership.