On Thursday the Key Stage 5 students in Activ8 and Digit4ll spent the morning with Luke Ambler taking part in a workshop focused on physical fitness, overall well-being and improving mental health. The aim of Luke’s #itsokaytotalk work is to build self-belief, confidence, reasoned motivation and greater self-esteem and our young people really got stuck in and gained a lot from the morning..

Luke spoke to the group about his own personal experiences and his #itsokaytotalk campaign to remove the stigma around depression and mental health..

As a result of his experiences, Luke has set up Andy’s Man Club to encourage men to talk and give them somewhere to come together in a safe environment to talk about issues or problems they have experienced in the past or are currently facing. They can benefit from sharing problems with other men who have been in similar situations and can help with advice on how they dealt with their issues.

Our group took part in a workshop encouraging each other to talk about themselves in a positive way, focusing on things they had learnt this year, identifying people that they could rely on and their personal heroes..

We also contributed to Luke’s social media campaign #itsokaytotalk

We’d like to thank Luke for a fantastic, positive morning – we think he enjoyed it too having read his tweet..

@Ambler09 Really enjoyable morning delivering a talk and workshop to @newbridgegroup. New Bridge Group is a special educational needs, education provider. They are doing an amazing job, was a real privilege to deliver there this morning. #ITSOKAYTOTALK

We hope to welcome Luke to New Bridge again soon!