D was a participant on a FreqOUT! ‘Transitions’ course at Quintin Kynaston School in Westminster.  D has been identified as needing help managing the transition from Primary to Secondary education, and the workshop was specifically designed to assist with this process.

D was identified early on in the course by a QK classroom teacher as a pupil who was particularly struggling to engage in group activities, and who it would ‘be great to get some involvement out of’.
During the first session, in which participants take a fresh look at film in preparation for developing their own ideas, D was withdrawn and unengaged.  He was reluctant to join in, and was at times distracted - arguing and bickering with other pupils.
D presented himself to the second session in an extremely agitated mood following a playground incident.  He was displaying a lot of pent-up anger, and was feeling very isolated from the rest of the group.
D was persuaded to channel his rage into a drama improvisation.  He devised and performed a very convincing improvised drama piece, in which he articulated his anger using physical theatre and mime.  The group were impressed, and chose to develop D’s work into their class film production.
Subsequently, D was propelled to the role of principal author, and star, of the group film, which is the primary output of the workshop.  This delighted him, and ignited an enthusiastic engagement during the remainder of the workshop.
Not only did D’s acting and technical ability continue to develop, but in subsequent workshop sessions he displayed a greatly improved level of behaviour - managing to focus for long periods of time on acting out the scene from different angles (which can be quite a repetitive process).
It was very apparent that D revelled in the attention that he gained from having his ideas realised by the class as a whole.  His self-esteem and his sense of his standing within the group increased greatly over the course of the workshop.  Where, at the beginning stages of the workshop, he was defensive and argumentative with his peers, he had become open and positively assertive by the time the project had reached the filming stages.
D’s tangible progress during the FreqOUT! course was attributable to the sense of empowerment he felt through seeing his imaginative ideas turned into something that felt important, and was fully respected by both his peers and by the adult staff.  It also seemed particularly beneficial to him that he was able to articulate elements of his emotional state, including rage and distraction, by acting out them out and sharing them with an audience.