Hope and Happiness

This theme highlights the role of enjoyment, wellbeing and prospects to a student’s personal development. By emphasising the role that enjoyment plays in education, we are better placed to instil a life-long love of learning in students. A sense of hope for the future is critical in developing resilience and a positive mindset in young people, enabling them to overcome life’s challenges.

The Hope and Happiness theme aims to: 

  • Increase student happiness and wellbeing
  • Instil hope for the future
  • Lead to a life-long love of learning
  • Develop resilience and growth mindset
  • Allow students to feel safe and supported in CEP programmes

Hope and Happiness is new as a dedicated CEP theme and as such, we are still developing new programmes to meet its aims. We have, however, reflected a number of these in other programmes we have run in the past, and a sense of fun, hope and growth has always underpinned our existing offering.

Some of the methods we use to achieve the aims of this theme include:

  • Creating activities that revolve around an enjoyment of learning
  • Connecting our programmes to the development of hopeful futures through positive messaging, showcasing and success stories
  • Developing programmes that enable students to support each other in school
  • Moving the narrative around mental health and wellbeing away from a deficit perspective

Examples of Hope and Happiness in action:

CEPxVOICEBOX

CEP works every year with the Cheltenham Literature Festival to host an afternoon takeover of the VOICEBOX stage. At the event students are given a stage to talk about their lives, their differences and their feelings. Themes in past years have included mental health and lived experience. The mental health event has been supported by Gloucestershire NHS and formed the basis for an afternoon workshop at Gloucester MusicWorks in 2023.