Upper School student creates and releases short film during Mental Health Awareness Week

Friday May 22^nd 2020

Originally inspired by a school project, Upper School student Aimee Casey creates and releases short film during Mental Health Awareness Week to support other dancers and raise money for Mental Health Foundation

Aimee Casey, Year 13 student, said: “Dancers and mental health is a topic that I’m incredibly passionate about. I started to think about a film to highlight the subject when I was studying for an Extended Project Qualification. I have had my own ups and downs with mental health in ballet, following a very serious injury, so the topic is very personal to me. 

For the film, I reached out to dancers from across the world and asked them to share their stories. Inspired by all of them, I developed the project in order to give more dancers an opportunity to have a voice and for them to feel supported within the dance community. 

Ballet, in many ways, is an incredibly demanding and tough industry, both physically and mentally. Individuals need to feel cared for and supported, especially as they start their training at a young and impressionable age. 

It was very apparent from my own experience, and that of many others, that ballet helps you grow as a person and offers so many incredible opportunities to express yourself through the art form. I have discovered there is a huge sense of community in ballet and you can be inspired by the people around you every day. 

In addition to support from school, I’ve also learnt that dancers support dancers. By making the film, I hope it inspires and encourages dancers to learn to love themselves and helps to remind them why they dance.”

Annelli Peavot, Assistant Principal responsible for Health, Wellbeing and Safeguarding, said: “We are incredibly proud of Aimee and her film. It addresses a serious issue within the dance world and she has explored this with great maturity and sensitivity. At Elmhurst we believe that no subject should be taboo so we constantly strive to provide our students with the knowledge, understanding and skills they need to be able to recognise when things are not going well and take the necessary steps to overcome them. Our approach is always preventative and we encourage students to seek help as early as possible. They know it’s OK not to be OK and that there are many avenues of support they can access within school.”

 Scroll down to watch the full video. 

Aimee’s fundraising page can be found at https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/mentalhealthprojectclip