As part of children's Mental Health week 2021, students and staff got involved in many activities to 'express themselves'.

Self-expression is about communicating your individuality. This can be through words, clothing, and hairstyle, or through art forms such as writing, drawing, music, and dance.

Self-expression can help you to showcase your true self – your story, your thoughts, feelings, and emotions. But this can also make us feel vulnerable, so you might want to take things one step at a time.

We often get told by our family, friends, school, communities and through social media how we ‘should’ look, think, speak, and act. These constant messages about what we ought to do, and who we ought to be, can make it difficult to let go of expectations and express our true selves.

Self-expression is a great way to relieve yourself of stress and free your mind. Self-expression can help you to reflect on your life, actions, decisions, relationships, beliefs, and thoughts — rather than keep them buried deep down.

Let's continue to participate in activities that are great for good Mental Health and Wellbeing and keep encouraging our young people to 'express' their thoughts and feelings. Here are some of the activities that were suggested. You can complete them anytime to help keep good Mental health and wellbeing.

• Take a photo dancing or holding a position.
• Recreate the dance photo using different media of your choice – e.g. turn it into a silhouette and do an arty background / draw it / paint it / edit it on a computer.
• Pick a quote that means something to you. Describe how it makes you feel and what it makes you think about.
• Take a photo or make a short video that expresses WHO you are. You could include your current likes and dislikes, strengths, interests, dreams, and passions.
• Complete a 7-day photo challenge, for instance take one photo a day that captures or expresses some aspect of yourself, either literally or in abstract form.
• Create a vision board about your future dreams and aspirations.
• Sing a song or make up a new song about a subject of your choice.
• Write a poem or a piece of creative writing about anything in the world that means something to you.
• Create a piece of art using any medium that you can find. It can be abstract or literal.
• Make something using any materials you have at home. This could be a functional item or just something that happened during your creative flow.

You can see below some of the imaginative and wonderful pieces of work created by our staff and students. Well done to all who got involved.