Before planning the workshops we visited the centre, met some of the clients and spoke to the centre manager, Bianca Rose, about opportunities and challenges. We had an open-ended conversation with the group about decision making, and started to mind map the kinds of decisions they did and didn’t make and how they felt about this. This was a good way to get people’s heads “into the topic” ahead of the workshops the following week. What people wrote on their mindmaps informed the questions we used in the talking head interviews the following week. Bianca introduced the traffic light cards they use so that partially verbal and less confident clients can have a voice, and she also undertook to give the safeguarding and teamworking briefing.

We wanted to plan activities that had sensory, visual and movement elements, whilst also being really ambitious about the work clients would create and how probing we could be in our conversations. Documental has facilitated a number of activities with learning disabled clients (Makaton singing and signing choir, a professional musical, singing and signing sessions at day centres and special schools), and we have often noticed that if you go in with high expectations of what the group can do, and keep up the pace, all the while structuring activities to have multiple access points, people nearly always exceed your expectations.

 

 

We also wanted to work with what already worked well for the group. So Parkstone Connect staff supported the activities and Parkstone Connect’s drama coach did the warm ups and gave us a steer on how to manage team dynamics.

Creative activities at Park Connect
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