Core Life Skills
I recently discovered that the World Health Organization published a white paper a while back that identified 10 Life Skills that “are at the heart of skills-based initiatives for the promotion of the health and well-being of children and adolescents.” They define life skills as “abilities for adaptive and positive behaviour, that enable individuals to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life.”
In short: these are 10 non-negotiable skills for children to develop in order to function successfully in the world. If you have been a member of The Drama Spot for any amount of time, you have learned a bit about our own Core Skills. If you compare, you will see our list and the WHO list overlap quite nicely. This was a pleasant surprise to me, but honestly not shocking. When I sat down to create The Drama Spot list of Core Skills, I started by asking myself “what skills do you need to command to be great at theatre?” From there, I figured I would whittle away the “extra” skills that are maybe less applicable to life as a whole, and bolster with a few other truly fundamental life skills. The goal was a final list of skills that truly reflected what I felt were essential skills for life, particularly well suited to the art of theatre.
What actually happened, was I made my first list of traits that you need to “succeed” in theatre (whatever that means) and found that there really wasn’t anything that didn’t directly and fundamentally apply to every day life. In fact, that O.G. list is remarkably similar to the WHO list and nearly identical to the Core Skills we have implemented in our curriculum to this day.
So what does all that mean? It means that there really is nothing quite like theatre when it comes to developing “soft” skills (which is a ridiculous phrase because for many people, these are the hardest skills of all!). Do theatre. See theatre. Make theatre. Show it to your kids and have them show it to you. There is no greater sure-fire way to create a well-rounded human than by putting them in the theatre.
Here are the W.H.O Life Skills along-side our own Core Skills:
WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION
self-awareness
empathy
critical thinking
creative thinking
decision-making
problem-solving
effective communication
interpersonal relationships
coping with stress, coping with emotions
