Leaps and Bounds

In 2004 Leaps & Bounds delivered the acclaimed Ballet Hoo! project, chronicled on Channel 4, which brought ballet and personal development to a group of vulnerable teenagers.

Building on this success over the past five years we have delivered major projects in the West Midlands, evolving and refining our methodology and generating lasting change in many more young lives. In 2008 we delivered the Wrosne project with young people drawn from the Wren’s Nest estate in Dudley and culminating in a spectacular musical theatre performance in Dudley’s canal tunnels. Later that year we completed the Chasing Fate project, featuring a specially commissioned musical at the Birmingham Hippodrome with young people from Sandwell, Dudley, Walsall and Telford & Wrekin. Our work is now expanding across England.

What We Achieve

We work exclusively with disadvantaged and at risk teenagers, typically drawn from areas of severe social and economic deprivation. The young people we recruit are often those who are otherwise likely to fall through the cracks in the education, care and criminal justice systems. We use a unique combination of three ingredients to generate extraordinary changes in the lives of these young people:

• Personal intervention, uncovering issues for each young person, challenging their behaviour, and helping them to see and take different choices;
• Involvement in cultural projects of the highest standard, working with professional artists;
• Ongoing one-to-one pastoral support and personal development supported by locally-based volunteer Life Coaches.