Ariel is currently working with schools on Wirral using our ‘Skills to Resist Radicalisation’ resource to explore prejudice and discrimination in our communities.  We used the film, ‘Science Project’, to explore differing generational attitudes by looking at the feelings of characters Aarushi and Daniel in response

Ariel Trust has been commissioned to share our ‘Grassing or Grooming?’ resource with 120 primary schools across Merseyside.  For a small organisation this represents a very demanding target but with half of the year gone we have already seen 95 schools sign up to become delivery partners.

In order to extend the reach of our work with schools in North West England we have entered into a new partnership with Edge Hill University (EHU). Based in Lancashire, the university trains teachers who are placed in primary schools across that county.  We are working with Senior Lecturer Dr.

We are back in Wirral schools delivering face to face sessions using our ‘Skills to Resist Radicalisation’ resources. 

Ariel is committed to the continuous improvement of our programmes with the aim of maximising the impacts that we deliver for young people.  Recent evaluation of our SafeSkills programme, conducted with Dartington Service Design Lab, identified a number of ways to improve the impact of our work; these included increasing the ‘dose’ and improving the ‘fidelit

Independent evaluation suggested that we could deliver a bigger impact if we increase the amount of time young people spend practicing refusal or resistance skills (dose) and improve the quality of the role play activities (fidelity).

 

We have been delivering a lot of face to face work in the recent months and it feels great to be back in the classroom! We have been able to work on our ‘Grassing or Grooming?’ resource using forum theatre as a medium. The classes have been able to perform mini scenes where they can stop/freeze the action when they feel they have an idea of how to produce a more positive outcome.

Ariel have welcomed an opportunity to work with Merseyside Police Violence Reduction Partnership to help increase awareness of criminal child exploitation in Knowsley primary schools.

Ariel's Sessional Facilitator, Caitlin, talks about the processes of adapting delivery during the pandemic: "When the first lockdown hit in March 2020 many of our planned sessions in schools had to be cancelled. We lost contact with lots of children suddenly and immediately, sometimes half way through learning about some pretty tough stuff.