ScreenPLAY is a social enterprise. We believe in enabling and empowering people through arts activity.

Giving people a voice, through film and arts projects helps develop life skills, confidence and self esteem while reducing exclusion and inequality. Young people become more active partners in their own education, developing knowledge for later life. The people we work with are at the heart of our films, making a difference to their schools, neighbourhoods and wider communities. The range of our work has grown to include making seafront banners with children in schools, an immersive ‘healing journey’ in a remote Dorset landscape using mobile digital technologies. Our projects create a sense of place in which those taking part become co-creators of the work.

ScreenPLAY works with young people to give them the digital skills they need for work, for their future education and for 21st century life. Our Silver Arts Award in Film and Digital production - hailed as an ‘excellent series of high quality arts experiences’ - offers young people a level 2 GCSE A-C equivalent qualification read more

The techniques at the heart of our work are what we call our ‘dramatherapy approach’ to filmmaking, developed by ScreenPLAY Co-director Sharon Hayden who is a practicising dramatherapist registered with the Health and Care Professions Council. Using skilled facilitators, we create a safe space for participants and enable them to tell their stories through drama, art and film.

The need for our work with young people is well supported by academic research. Emotional health in childhood is the most important contributing factor in young people’s future satisfaction and happiness in life, according to Professor Richard Layard and the Wellbeing research project at the London School of Economics (What Predicts a Successful Life - A Life-Course model of Well-being, Economic Journal Nov 2014).

ScreenPLAY has delivered several projects in partnership with Jigsaw PSHE, developers of the Jigsaw scheme of social and emotional learning for primary and secondary schools.