wolf + water arts company

5-7 December 2007 Edinburgh

A three day course on using drama and theatre techniques with young people who have sexually concerning behaviour

This spring we will be running the fourth of our Street Music courses in Exeter.
The course is a 12 week structured programme of creative, technical and cultural hip-hop music education for young people aged 14 – 25 who are out of, or at risk of being excluded from formal education, training or employment.

The course covers:
• Music theory and composition.
• History of music and music culture.
• Song writing techniques and lyrical content.
• Music technology and uses of computer software
• Digital Illustration and Graphic design
• Djing

Drama to Confront Offending Behaviour teaches simple group work & drama techniques to challenge the habitual thoughts & thinking disorders that offenders use to excuse & justify their behaviour. Drama, as an engaging active process, is ideal for working with offenders with limited verbal or literacy skills who may switch off in more traditional “flip chart based” courses.

(Sheffield, UK, 2001)

A performance to sum up this three day annual conference concerning the growing UK Mediation movement & its relationship to the Criminal Justice system, emphasising the complexity of issues faced by mediators such as working with people with learning difficulties & people with mental health problems.

Delegate Comments

(Mount Gould Hospital, Plymouth 1999 - 2001)

Wolf + Water have been consultants on the individual treatment, group work programme & staff training at this project for young people & teenagers displaying sexually abusive or concerning behaviour. In both one to one & group sessions, drama & arts techniques are used to work with the young people to help them confront their behaviour & offences. In training supervision staff present current difficulties from their case load & Wolf & Water work with the consultants, psychologists & fieldworkers on creative approaches that might help.

(Exeter, Devon, UK, 2000)

An especially devised performance to open a one day conference exploring the treatment & rehabilitation of young offenders in the South West. Wolf + Water’s show documented the background, experiences & subsequent motivations of one particular young offender & his descent into crime, while highlighting some of the factors & needs which, if met, might have controlled or prevented his offending.

Co-ordinator - C-FAR

A course covering all aspect of brief & long term behaviour modification for offenders with problems with anger & violence difficulties. Course includes:

1. Techniques for cognitive awareness & intervention in high risk situations
2. Using drama to create an accessible “language of anger”
3. Drama & arts to explore core roots of angry behaviours
4. Working with depression - the domain of inverted anger
5. Breaking dynamics & rehearsing for the future

(see also the Defusing Bombs project).

A training course for those working with clients on issues of self esteem & peer pressure & the relationship between these & offending behaviour. Course includes:

1. Working with issues of anger & depression
2. Drama & arts to create an accessible language of self esteem
3. Drama to fight the internal critics
4. Breaking dynamics & rehearsing for the future

Victim empathy work is notoriously difficult to undertake. Often, at worst, offenders go through the motions of the victim empathy process. Sometimes at best, as the offender begins to empathise so automatic defensive responses to feeling bad, ashamed & the sense of being “persecuted” often kick straight back in. This course works with staff on how using a variety of creative techniques to explore effective victim empathy work that treads the tricky course of keeping offenders realistically involved & engaged in what is a difficult if not alien emotional process for them.

Designed for staff working on a one to one or group setting with sex offenders. One of the most common problems found in working with this wide & extremely difficult client group is how quickly they become habituated to the structure & content of regular group work, soon learning how much they can disclose & manipulate. This can lead to a situation where it becomes very difficult for staff to realistically judge how much of the work being undertaken is actually being internalised.