Breathe Magic for Mental Health

Magic at its heart requires an intrinsic comprehension of human behaviour and the art of communication. To successfully perform magic, you need a detailed understanding of eye contact, directing your audience’s attention and creative storytelling. Contrastingly, many with mental health conditions avoid eye contact, can become shy and withdrawn and struggle socially. By teaching specially selected magic tricks we engage young people in a playful and creative understanding of the power and impact of body language, storytelling, verbal and non-verbal communication, performance skills, self-belief and confidence.

Participants take part in something engaging, fun and unusual, whilst learning tools and techniques that will last them a lifetime, building confidence, improving mental health and wellbeing and reducing symptoms.

In 2021, Breathe secured five partnerships exploring the benefits of magic for many cognitive and mental health gains working with a wide range of participants including:

– Brain injury survivors with Headway East London and Headway Nottingham.
– Refugees with Compass Collective.
– Children and Young People with Open School East and Great Ormand Street Hospital (GOSH).

These 6-8 week programmes were co-designed and delivered by our team of professional Magic Circle magicians, working closely with our partners and occupational therapists, to create the content and magic tricks to meet the needs of the participants.

Building on extensive pilot work and the robust foundations of our award-winning Breathe Magic Intensive Therapy Programme, Breathe will explore the use of magic and performance to improve the mental health, confidence, communication skills, self-belief and self-esteem of young people attending a Pupil Referral Unit (PRU). PRUs are an alternative education provision for young people who cannot attend mainstream school for several reasons, including permanent or temporary exclusion, neurodiverse learning styles, physical and mental health conditions or behavioural challenges.

Thanks to support from Arts Council England and DCMS Culture Recovery Fund funding, we are currently delivering more Breathe Magic for Mental Health programmes, including in-person delivery as well as online sessions.