Hi, I’m John from Wooden Hill UK.
We asked to be guest speaker on the brilliant FunkeeMunkee site for June 2005 because that’s our first birthday and we thought it would be nice to celebrate with you, seeing as how we wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the children and young people of Bedfordshire!
Three years ago my colleagues Cally and Laura and I ran a drama workshop for a group of young people who had been living in care. It went really well and gave us such a buzz that we decided we should really be doing this stuff for a living. So we did more drama workshops and started delivering Total Respect training to staff and young people at Bedfordshire Social Services and on 14th June 2004 we became Wooden Hill UK Ltd.
In the last year we’ve delivered lots of drama workshops to lots of people, sometimes looking at issues like bullying, living in care or being a young carer, sometimes just for the fun of it. We’re also now running Total Respect training every school holiday and we organised last year’s Summer Event for young people living in care and followed that with the Young People’s Oscars.
All of this has been done working hand-in-hand with young people.
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Thanks for all the fun and laughter and for teaching us so much really useful stuff and for being amazing!
And to those of you who haven’t done any of the above yet – we look forward to meeting you! Here’s to another great year!!
John who likes Jelly
Wooden Hill UK Ltd
If you’ve been on any Wooden Hill activities or would like to know more about what we do, we’d love to hear from you at: john@woodenhilluk.co.uk
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The children and young people’s participation group, RAW (Rights And Wrongs group), planned the Summer Event with us and led the planning for the Oscars as well as presenting them. RAW have also tried and tested training exercises as well as adapting old ones and inventing new ones with us. We currently have about 15 young people who are trained or training to deliver workshops and other activities alongside Cally, Laura and me.
Amy, Andy, Ashley and Carly are our most experienced young trainers and get employed to co-deliver training with us in Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Buckinghamshire. They never fail to blow people away with their total brilliance!!!
There are loads of ways that young people can have a say in decisions that affect them and I really hope that Wooden Hill has helped young people to find their voices and adults to find their ears.
So any way, I could go on and on about how fabulous we are, but that’s not why we wanted to guest on Funkee Munkee – if you want to know more about what we do, check out the Livin’ It page and let RAW tell you - by the way, the title “Livin’ It” comes from Amy who summed up the Care System on our very first Total Respect 2½ years ago with the phrase:
“Adults Make It – We Live It!!!”.
A phrase we’ve stolen and use all the time now – thanks Amy! And that’s what I came here to say - thank you!!
Thanks to all the fantastic young trainers who’ve worked with us and are never less than brilliant.
Thanks to everyone who’s been on Total Respect – both young and not-so-young – and to everyone who’s been to a drama workshop or worked with us in any way
at all.
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