Youth Scotland aid to support and build up young people and voluntary youth workers across the country. To achieve this goal they provide training programmes, projects and events. They also deliver youth awards training which accredits children and young adults on their achievements within their groups. Some of these include Hi5, Dynamic Youth Awards and Youth Achievement Awards.

After hearing that dance was not part of Youth Scotland I pitched to help create dance activities and games which could be put into current programmes they have running. This would mean that they could outreach these programmes into more dance based youth groups across Scotland. It was agreed that I would create these activities and incorporate them into the Dynamic Youth Awards which are aimed to help young people find leadership skills in everyday life. I had to ensure that I took on board the leadership skill aspect while creating these activities as it was crucial that I linked these to the aims and task of their training programme.

The training that benefited me the most during my placement was the Intro to Hi 5 and Dynamic Youth Awards and the iLead Inspire training days as it helped me to see how Youth Scotland run their programmes and what guidelines they use to keep control of the course. By seeing the activities put into practice I was able to see how Stuart organised each activity, how he developed it and how he interacted with each individual. It had given me the knowledge I needed to create activities and allowed me to create a guideline of how a workshop session could be ran. This will help me I the future if I run dance based workshops as I now know how to create a guideline of a workshop and how it would run. I am also more confident in myself to be able to create content for a dance based workshop.

Following the creative process, I had a meeting with Stuart where I pitched the activities. He gave me feedback on each one and asked me questions on how I would teach and deliver these. By answering these questions I felt I was able to consolidate my knowledge of teaching. I was also able to learn more about simplifying and making the activities more complex if they needed to be. Once we had spoken about each activity Stuart explained where I would be delivering a workshop using the work I had created. He assisted me in making a workshop plan and we discussed which resources we would take with us. Overall I have enjoyed creating dance games and activities for Youth Scotland. I have learned how to bring dance into common games and how to create dance activities from scratch. With the help of Stuarts expertise and advice I have learned how to be able to manipulate the activities and workshop as a whole to suit the group and their needs on the day.