30/10/2021
Hello all,
It's been really quite sometime since we last posted and it looks like we might have just about survived this Awful pandemic as a business which is amazing as we're a Theatre based education in Schools company. Two very hard hit areas and are funded predominately by commissions from Local authorities, who as we all know have been doing an amazing job protecting our communities as best they can through this uncertain time utilising all allocated resources to do so.
It has affected everyone's life, some worse than others, with terrible loss and to those families hardest affected, we offer our sincere condolences. This has just made us more determined to reach out to reduce smoking especially as we've seen how hard smokers were hit by covid.
And........yet through all the mayhem we've all just done all we can. I personally kept myself busy, delivering out Food parcels to those in need for the local foodbank (Aylesbury Vineyard Storehouse) utilising the POP van 'Gwen', (which alas has now been sold for company survival and Gwen has become a lockdown camper van project to a very lucky family.)
However.... In December 2021 POP has been invited and has the privilege of presenting to all local authority decision makers for the whole of the South East region of the UK.
Very exciting times especially as the government have released substantial funding to all these authorities specifically to target Smoking and Weight management.
Our show has been so successful in reducing uptake of smoking in Secondary schools from 12% to just 3.8% in 2020 smashing the Department of Health directive of 5% set in 2015 to be met by 2020. This is an achievement we are immensely proud of. Public Health England have been blown away with these stats. Not to mention the reverse positive peer pressure to smoking parents this creates. Creating further sign ups to various Stop smoking services country wide.
As most of you know, we achieved this by targeting primary school children, educating them early at years 5/6 on the long and short health harm's associated with smoking, the importance peer resilience and dangers of illicit to***co. We did this by partnering with Trading Standards, Public Health and tying in with the PSHE curriculum.
This allows pupils to make informed decisions later through life regarding smoking. Which has proved to be very successful as seen above.
However, For the 3.8% that slipped through our Net and for older/other children who have never seen "Meet The Stinkers" we are about to start to trial a new concept in a local secondary school to us, utilizing and combining their PSHE curriculum and their Drama curriculum, adapting our show using the schools drama students, (not puppets and professional actors as in Primary schools), for an older targeted demographic audience, this is very exciting as it is always going to be current and poignant, trends always mutate and differ regionally , so hopefully this will help to connect to a predominently difficult to reach target audience, allowing us to target specific tailored issues within the local area of the school and adapt the script accordingly for each area of importance inputted by the school and it's students, as school outside social demographic will different per area.
This will all be done ensuring that the local authority's commissioned directive and guidelines are met in full.
After thought: The schools PTA can also make some money for the school, by selling tickets to an evening, to parents, performance. Which will target the smoking parents within the audience. Win win.
So lots ahead and exciting times. We'll soon be back on our feet. And coming to a school near you I'm sure.
Did I mention the digital streaming possibilities currently being looked into. 😉
From everyone here at POP! 2022 here we come!
