mission
we believe every child has a unique potential and is innately driven to thrive. we know that being emotionally literate and intelligent promotes this process, and that drama is an optimal medium to develop emotional and social competencies as it engages thought, emotion, communication, and action. we want to restore imaginative and collaborative play habits that celebrate children’s essen
ce by exploring their innate creativity and intrinsic sense of wonder, beauty, and curiosity. and so, promote their full and holistic flourishment and development. we want to provide an exploratory and transformative space where children can identify and develop their unique strengths and aspirations. where we can help them learn about the world they live in and equip them with tools to harmoniously navigate it each day. and so, nurture their ability to make fruitful and conscious choices, and learn to self-rely. ultimately, we hope to contribute to building confident, determined, empathic, compassionate, and happy humans that are activists not only in building a better world for themselves but also for others, and protect our planet. and so, plant seeds for a more loving humanity by fostering strong humanitarian and environmental values in every child we work with. model
our inter-disciplinary applied drama model is drama-based, multi-arts, child-centred, and all inclusive. our method is predominantly devising, play-based and immersive and provides children with opportunities to discover, explore and celebrate their inner worlds, and the inner worlds of those around them. within this imaginative medium we safely explore their emotionality and encourage them to intuitively identify, explore, and organically build new emotional and social competencies. our sessions are fun, playful, reflective, collaborative, inclusive, and safe. our practitioners model values of trust, acceptance, respect, empathy, compassion, and active humanship. children are active agents in their own learning whilst supporting and inspiring others. we deliver a creative activity that assists children’s holistic development by addressing competencies and areas of development that are not targeted in school curriculums. our model has been rigorously researched and is ever evolving as we continuously learn from each cohort we work with. we consistently evaluate the impact of our work in our sessions, and often notice a therapeutic impact. however, we are not a clinical intervention. all our practitioners are trained in safeguarding and are DBS checked. journey
this project was launched in 2011, in Porto, as expressão do Ser - - out of a collaboration between two theatre artists - Sara Paz and Sandra Salomé - who are passionate about the transformative potential of the cross-over between theatre and psychology. its original drama-based approach was inspired by the teachings of Sir Ken Robinson and focused on unleashing children’s creativity and their personal and social competencies, compromised by the overtaking of technology-based play habits and mainstream cognitive-focused education. since its outset the project has reached children of all backgrounds, as we believe children from different demographics present similar needs in this area of development. as the project expanded to London the name was changed to insideOut applied drama. the original approach was later advanced by a pioneering academic study on this field which currently addresses children’s emotional intelligence using bespoke applied drama conventions. we have delivered workshops and programmes in Porto, Goa, and London in partnership with schools, personal development companies, and cultural organisations. we continue investing in expanding our network to East Timor and advance our model to address the emotional development of children who have been affected by trauma and forced displacement.
