Grab your sun cream, sunglasses and festival vibes because we are now just one week away from our annual Wellbeing Festival at Dalby Forest, for girls across North Yorkshire. This year we will welcome students from 19 different schools across the county, with some travelling from as far as York and Richmond to take part in another exciting day of activities out in nature.
The festival is in it’s fifth year and the North Yorkshire Sport team have been hard at work, taking on feed back from previous events and working with schools to get new students involved, as well as bringing previous attendees back as volunteers. We will have teams of students from George Pindar School, Boroughbridge High School, Richmond School and Ryedale Secondary School supporting the day as part of our York Mix media teams, Kinball leaders, face painting and assisting with the highly anticipated colour course.
Following feedback around the experience of some students and the particular value they found in having free time within the Activity Village, we have also taken the time to add more activities and new opportunities to this area of the event to support the varying ways that young people like to enjoy the day and to ensure that it is as inclusive as possible. Students can look forward to creative stations with Inspire Youth and North Yorkshire Youth, Circus Skills, T1 Rugby with White Rose Rugby and a host of other activities. We want to inspire attendees to try new things and be confident enough to have a go at something different.
In preparation for the event, on Friday 15th May students from Boroughbridge High School and Richmond Secondary School came together for a morning of leadership training with Kinball UK. Together they learnt new skills, planned their own games and activities and then had the opportunity to practise their coaching with primary school students from Boroughbridge Primary and St Mary’s Primary School as part of a School Games event organised by Ruth Whitehead, Harrogate SGO.
40 primary school students celebrated the end of SATS week in the sunshine, taking part in relay races and team challenges. It was a great opportunity for the young leaders to practise their delivery with young participants and adapting those activities for different needs – all ready for their Kinball delivery on 11th June.
Thank you to Boroughbridge High School for hosting us and for the two primary schools who attended!
Alongside Kinball, we are welcoming Helen from Kinesis Dance to take charge of the dance stage at this year’s festival. In order to make sure that everyone feels welcome and as confident as possible, Helen has put together a playlist on Spotify so that students and staff have the chance to know which songs they might be dancing to in advance. We hope that everyone can listen ahead of time, enjoy their weekend and get excited for the event over the next week. On the day, Helen will lead groups through 1-2 routines, teaching step by step choreography and making sure that everyone has the best time. The playlist can be accessed here or via the link below.
The North Yorkshire Sport team are so excited for the event next week and hope that it will be another memorable year for every student that attends, as well as all of our returning volunteers. Let’s keep our fingers crossed for some good weather and we’ll see you there.
