Numerous dancers and choreographers from The Royal Ballet School go on to excel in the ballet world. But the School doesn’t only support these dancers on technical and creative levels. Emotional support and pastoral care are also crucial to help these dancers become exceptional performers.
The Royal Ballet School’s Outstanding Pastoral Care
[1] Each Royal Ballet School staff member upholds their duty of care to support students, who can turn to specific staff for different aspects of their well-being. For example, each student has an academic tutor who helps with schoolwork matters, while the school nurses and healthcare team offer pastoral support.
Staff also help students protect their well-being by teaching them foundation and performance skills:
- Foundation skills include self-management, social management, self-awareness, social awareness, and moral-ethical decision making.
- Performance skills include self-efficacy, maintaining motivation, handling mistakes, performing under pressure, and tackling perfectionism.
The Royal Ballet School’s Approach to Well-Being
The foundation and performance skills that Royal Ballet School staff teach mirror the School’s Approach to Well-being. This Approach lays out the School’s efforts to promote students’ emotional health.
Staff uphold the Approach to Well-being by:
- Asking students for their perspectives and using these to influence decisions.
- Supporting students’ social and emotional learning throughout the curriculum and helping them become more resilient.
- Protecting their own well-being as well as students’ well-being.
- Pinpointing opportunities for pastoral care development and monitoring the impact of interventions.
- Engaging with parents and carers to protect student well-being.
- Maintaining an environment and ethos that encourages respect and celebrates diversity.
- Making appropriate referrals and offering targeted support.
Several staff members also take mental health first aid training. This training develops their understanding of the importance of mental health support for students.
Plus, the School’s mental health lead, who is also a clinical psychologist, works with all teams to help staff recognise changes in student behaviour. These behavioural changes may signal a need for further pastoral care.
Pastoral Care for Boarders
All Royal Ballet School students belong to a boarding house, where they develop friendships with peers and strong relationships with boarding staff.
These relationships blossom from the day students join their boarding houses. Each boarding team cultivates a welcoming, home-from-home environment with a supportive induction plan.
When Year 7 students join White Lodge[2] [3] , they meet a Year 8 guide, who becomes a friend right away. Their Year 8 guide gives them a decorated ballet shoe as a welcome present. Year 7 students also receive a Royal Ballet School teddy bear as a welcome gift.
The School also welcomes new students in other year groups. These students receive support from a student guide as they settle in, too.
Meanwhile, students joining Upper School[4] [5] enjoy an orientation weekend. During this weekend, they explore their new local area and home in the centre of London.
Extra-Curricular and Social Activities
Making time for social activities is essential to well-being. As a result, The Royal Ballet School makes sure all students have access to weekend trips and pastimes.
White Lodge students often enjoy trips to museums, the cinema, and the London Eye. They also spend time swimming, baking, and relaxing with friends, perhaps by going bowling, taking part in a craft workshop, or getting together for a film night.
Living in central London, the older Upper School students have a wealth of attractions on their doorstep to relax and spend time with friends.
Career Support for Upper School Students
Pastoral support can be particularly useful for Upper School students who are preparing for their careers as performers or choreographers.
The Royal Ballet School supports all students with this process, helping them develop applications for dance companies around the world. Staff also help students complete their Professional Practice Module in the final year of their degree programme.
Furthermore, Artistic staff work with students to understand their ambitions before contacting artistic directors around the world. These directors may have suitable career opportunities for graduating dancers. Often, these opportunities give dancers the exposure they need to launch successful ballet careers.
Transition Support for White Lodge Students
Pastoral support is also essential for White Lodge students as they transition from Years 9 to 10, 11, and 12. Students can join the artistic manager and academic and pastoral principal for bespoke planning meetings to aid these transitions.
Staff also guide students through the process of producing video and photographic audition materials.
Protecting Staff Well-Being
The Royal Ballet School knows that for staff to offer a high level of care to students, they must also be able to protect their own well-being. To uphold staff well-being, the School enrols all staff on a confidential, independent employee assistance programme.
The School also holds a Well-being Committee meeting every half-term. This meeting gives staff an opportunity to discuss new well-being provisions and the success of provisions that are already in place.
Furthermore, the School allocates every team with a Well-being Committee representative. This individual ensures every staff member in their area has the chance to share their input into the School’s wellness provisions.
Promoting Emotional Well-Being Through Events and Activities
Students have access to The Royal Ballet School’s pastoral care whenever they need it. But the School also hosts a variety of events and activities to inspire emotional well-being.
Here are four of the events that students have enjoyed so far in 2023.
1. Pride Month
The Royal Ballet School has made several efforts to ensure LGBTQ+ students feel included and celebrated at school. For example, every year, The School celebrates Pride Month to recognise LGBTQ+ history and culture.
Staff Developments to Support LGBTQ+ Students
During Pride Month (June), Assistant Housemistress of Aud Jebsen Hall Donna Balsdon discussed the School’s latest developments to advance diversity and inclusion.
These developments include:
- Replacing male and female house registers with genderless registers.
- Staff wearing rainbow-coloured lanyards.
- New LGBTQ+ resources in the common rooms. These resources include a Pride noticeboard and a Pride articles folder.
- Staff completing Educare Equality and Diversity training at the beginning of the year.
Pride Month Activities to Promote Inclusion
During Pride Month, the School arranged for students to enjoy several activities that promote inclusion. These activities included tie-dying tote bags in Pride colours, baking rainbow cakes, and collecting LGBTQ+ books. Students also launched a Pride-themed book club and enjoyed a talk from Educate and Celebrate’s Elly Barns.
Students in Aud Jebsen Hall decorated their boarding house with flags and celebrated a different Pride icon on their house noticeboard each day of the month.
The School’s Pride efforts extended outside the School, too. Staff accompanied students to London, where they took part in the Pride march.
Learning About the History of Pride Month
Activities aside, students also learnt about the history of Pride Month. Staff explained that the celebratory month came into being in 1969 after the Stonewall riots against homophobia. Today, The Royal Ballet School is one of many organisations that celebrates Pride Month to support the LGBTQ+ community and reflect on the prejudices it has faced.
Since completing a course from Stonewall — “Improving LGBTQ+ young people’s mental health and well-being” — Balsdon has developed an action plan to help the School offer a high level of support to LGBTQ+ students.
Celebrating Visibility Events
Pride Month is just one of the visibility events that The Royal Ballet School celebrates. The School also marks visibility days like International Transgender Day of Visibility to represent and support every staff and student member.
2. Assemblée Internationale
[6] Shortly before Pride Month, The Royal Ballet School also got involved in Assemblée Internationale, a festival that Canada’s National Ballet School organises.
Anti-Black racism was the theme of this year’s festival. The Royal Ballet School was keen to support this theme, which complements its aim to promote equity, diversity, and inclusion.
An Olympic-calibre group of artistic directors and dancers welcomes organisations and individuals from training schools across the world to this festival. Royal Ballet School students attended the festival in Toronto with the School’s CEO and Artistic Director Christopher Powney, Chief Operating Officer Pippa Adamson, and Second Year Ballet Teacher Paul Lewis.
The Purpose of Assemblée Internationale
Assemblée Internationale allows young artists to develop their leadership skills and work closely with global peers. They also play a key role in the progression of equity in the international ballet community.
Together, young people have the opportunity to pave the way for change in the ballet art form. They also work to strengthen the language of ballet, making this language more relevant and powerful for today’s diverse society.
Preparing For Assemblée Internationale
Dancers from 37 schools learnt routines over Zoom to perform at the festival. Students choreographed some of these pieces, and professionals choreographed others. Preparation for the festival also included a variety of keynotes, discussions, and educational panels.
Royal Ballet School student Caspar Lench played an essential role in preparation for the event. As part of the Assemblée Internationale think tank, he joined frequent online meetings to prepare with international students.
Lench completed this preparation alongside his Extended Project Qualification (EPQ), in which he explored discrimination and prejudice. He had already studied Black artists and choreographers — a core element of The Royal Ballet School curriculum — in his second year. This study inspired his contributions to the think tank.
3. Mental Health Awareness Week
[7] The Royal Ballet School also prepared activities to acknowledge Mental Health Awareness Week in May. Designed to relieve anxiety, both students and staff enjoyed the following activities:
- Creating gratitude jars to focus on the positives they feel grateful for.
- Making playlists of mood-boosting songs to share with friends and family.
- Hula hooping to explore the connection between physical movement and positive emotions.
- Enjoying the outdoors on treasure hunts to explore natural surroundings.
- Spending reflective time to focus inward and take time for themselves.
Anxiety-Themed Email Tips and Support
During Mental Health Awareness Week, School Counsellor Lucy Bailie and Mental Health Lead Christian Uitzinger prepared daily emails to educate staff and students on anxiety.
These emails focused on what anxiety is and how worry or fear can manifest in different people. Bailie and Uitzinger also delved into anxiety that dancers may experience and how the School can help students avoid and alleviate this. Their tips included spending time in nature, body scanning, box breathing, and connecting with friends.
4. Stress Awareness Month
[8] Shortly before Mental Health Awareness Week, The Royal Ballet School also acknowledged Stress Awareness Month. During April, staff helped students focus on the ways that stress may affect their daily lives and how to handle this.
Although The Royal Ballet School placed a special focus on emotional well-being for Stress Awareness Month, open discussions about worry and anxiety are also key to the School’s Healthy Dancer Programme, which runs all year round.
The Royal Ballet School’s Healthy Dancer Programme
The Healthy Dancer Programme forms the core of The Royal Ballet School’s pastoral offerings. The School crafted the Programme to ensure each student receives the support they need to uphold — and take responsibility for — their emotional, psychological, and physical health.
Students receive advice and guidance from a specialist team of 20 healthcare professionals. These professionals include a healthcare manager, clinical psychologist, counsellors, physiotherapists, rehabilitation ballet instructors, sports physicians, nutritionists, strength and conditioning coaches, Pilates instructors, and school nurses.
The professionals work with the artistic team to inform the School’s system of training. They also create a safe environment for students to explore and strengthen all areas of their health and well-being. And they provide a variety of resources to support students in all areas of wellness.
As part of the Healthy Dancer Programme, students complete screening exercises every term. The School collects data from the screening exercises to craft a unique conditioning programme for every student.
The School also works with the English Institute of Sport (EIS) to offer thorough nutrition support to students. An EIS nutritionist works with the catering team and students for two days each week, providing bespoke nutrition advice and educating students on healthy attitudes to fuelling their bodies for elite performance.
On top of this, students attend sessions with counsellors, who focus on performance psychology and psychological well-being.
Students can also self-refer for counselling at both of the School’s sites and report concerns anonymously through an app.
Promoting Well-Being, Now and in the Future
Following Pride Month, Assemblée Internationale, Mental Health Awareness Week, and Stress Awareness Month, The Royal Ballet School looks forward to promoting well-being throughout the rest of the year and beyond.
About The Royal Ballet School
The Royal Ballet School is shaping the future of classical ballet, both by protecting its history and by replacing outdated ballet training methods with modern approaches. Students become established ballet dancers who are also adept in a variety of other dance styles. These dancers go on to work with notable companies like The Royal Ballet and Birmingham Royal Ballet.
Visit The Royal Ballet School’s website.
Sources for this section:
Academic and pastoral information (from Academic Principal) Word doc
Supporting Dancers’ Mental Well-Being: The Royal Ballet School’s Pastoral Care
Suggested link: https://www.royalballetschool.org.uk/discover/academic-boarding/life-at-white-lodge/
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Suggested link: https://www.royalballetschool.org.uk/discover/academic-boarding/life-at-upper-school/
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Sources for this section:
Source for this section: https://www.royalballetschool.org.uk/2023/05/23/coping-with-anxiety-mental-health-awareness-week-2023/
Sources for this section: https://www.royalballetschool.org.uk/2023/04/12/how-we-help-students-and-staff-manage-stress-stress-awareness-month-2023/
