Humanutopia

Humanutopia is a people first development company who have been working with the staff and students here at Freebrough Academy since October 2010. With the help of their inspirational team members and humorous, but hard hitting ‘HU R U?’ interventions, humanutopia have been encouraging the students and staff of the Academy to stop and reflect on their lives so far and think about their hopes and dreams for the future. These interventions have allowed students to understand the impact their communication has on relationships and how this ultimately allows or restricts their growth as individuals and communities.

 

All students in the Academy are given the opportunity to join ‘The Heroes Journey’. This journey sees them develop the skills shown on the diagram above. Our team of trainee Heroes have so far attended additional humanutopia training sessions, worked with younger students within the Academy and gone out to local primary schools to work with key stage 1 and 2 children.

 

 

Written by Aimee, Freebrough Academy student.

When Freebrough turned into an Academy, we were given the opportunity to work with a company called Humanutopia – who help young people to understand their own feelings and behaviours and fight (not literally) against bullying.

During the first couple of sessions I attended I wasn’t sure what I thought about it. But when the opportunity came along to become a Hero, I took it – and have enjoyed it ever since. A Hero is someone who works with the Humanutopia team to train to be a role model for younger students. Each summer, we help to organise a HARmony Camp for the year 6 students who are moving up from primary school.  Over the course of the two day camp, many different workshops are held including; singing, dance, arts and crafts, drumming and sports. Loads of fun is had by everyone who attends!

A bus load of Freebrough Heroes also attended Teesside University to attend a conference alongside students from five other secondary schools.  We were the only trained Heroes, and spent the day training up the others to follow our lead.  After we’d finished the morning training session, over 80 primary school students came in to spend the remainder of the afternoon with us. We had a really great time!

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“Humanutopia has helped me so much over the last few weeks, I’ve become so much more confident, and I’m really starting to think that I can make a difference and I think that it’s done pretty much the same for other people too. Different year groups are talking to each other and people seem to be more comfortable talking to each other within year groups too, and it’s nice knowing that we can all be ourselves around each other”.”

““The parents evening the other night was awesome. My mam was dead proud of me when I spoke on the microphone and when she got up on the microphone as well, I didn’t even think about pretending not to care in case it wasn’t cool because it made me so happy to know how supportive she is being. It was definitely another big tipping point for me. Every time we do a Humanutopia day, I come home raving about it but it was nice for her to see with her own eyes what Humanutopia is all about, what we have done so far and what is still yet to come.”

 “The Heroes Journey has totally rocked my world (in a good way) and now I don’t let anyone else but me drive my car, I make my own choices”.”

““Today was awesome. Working with staff is a totally different experience to working with students. Today really helped me understand how teachers see us and how we can help them out. It was really good answering questions for them because I think it opened up their minds to how teenagers are and what struggles we face. It was very nice when we got a big clap and people standing up at the end of the session as well; made me feel warm and fuzzy inside!”

““I just want to say what a great day I had at Badger Hill Primary school. Never in a million years did I think I would be training year 5 children to be heroes to year 1′s and 2′s! I never thought that year 5′s would be coming up to me at their school telling me that they wanted to keep working with me and enjoying it!!!
The Humanutopia team have helped me to realise who I really am and that I shouldn’t hide behind my image just to fit in. It made me stop and think for a moment about who I am and where I am going in life.  I just want to thank the whole team and the members I have worked with, what an inspiration you are”.”

Freebrough Academy and Humanutopia will continue to work together over the coming months and years to improve the life chances of all our young people.  To find out more about the work of Humanutopia, or to read more comments from our students, please visit www.humanutopia.com