Been a wee while since I brought you news of where we are with Outreach. Quite possibly the seasons have moved from winter to spring, back to winter, and onto spring again………with any luck summer is just around the corner. But ahead of taking flight and enjoying ourselves on sunny beaches where, and more importantly, who are we with just now?

Still travelling those roads out of Edinburgh and onto Alloa with the lovely Lorneshill Academy pupils; as part of our creative identities project 12 referred pupils from this school have been dancing weekly as part of their school day. Included in the group are LAC and young carers. This is the first time that Lorneshill Academy have done work like this; their regular day does not include dancing, that’s something that’s normally reserved for after school time.

Along with the obvious health benefits from a good work out (believe me, we put them through their paces!) the young people are working better as a group, listening more, co-operating with one another, supporting one another and achieving great things. This is our second term working with the group and we hope to document the great work through film.

Travelling back over the water (twice, if you do both bridges………) we continue to dance in The Kingdom; 8 children from Barnardos Foster Care Service have been meeting weekly in Dunfermline for their classes enjoying a variety of styles including hula hooping and Bollywood. We decided to stretch the group with new and exotic material after their 8 week programme of street dance. Feeling that the experience could go either way – a rip roaring success or a rip roaring riot- the children rose to the challenges and took to it all, like real professionals! This group have brought their challenges to us, not always in the best of moods, they stumble into the room looking first of all for ways to wreck havoc. It can be a bit like watching mercury fall and hit the floor! Developing good group work skills has been an essential tool for teachers working here. Getting into the room ahead of the children and moving any obvious distractions is a good starting place!

Another one of our challenges is the young More Choices More Chances group. The main difficulty here is getting all of them to turn up on time! These are school non-attenders and school leavers not in education, employment or training. We have 10 young people working with us on Tuesdays and Fridays with a full programme of activities to keep them busy. Earlier readers may recall our introduction of a healthy food policy; a complete ban on crisps and a proper lunch with fresh fruit on both days. Crisps are now a thing of the past, nobody even mentions them anymore. Their current intake of fruit could put the drosophila fly at risk of extinction……..melon, grapes and strawberries are flavour of the month where previously cheese and onion once ruled.

If the route to change is through their bellies then maybe a chocolate watch for each of them might get them all to turn up on time every week!?