Mimbre Youth Classes Going Online

17 Apr Mimbre Youth Classes Going Online

Making our summer term available to all with
Online acrobatics and street dance classes!

We hope you are all doing OK in these testing times! We wanted to send a quick update with information about classes and activities for those of you with young people at home, or to forward to friends or families who have children climbing the walls! 

UPDATE: After considering our participants’ and their parents’ feedback, in light of the continuation of circumstance nation-wide, we are now looking into continuing to offer online classes beyond our original dates, with Tuesday 19th May as half-term. Classes will most likely resume on Tuesdays in a similar digital format. We will be able to provide more information by Friday 29th May. New participants are welcome to sign up.

Mimbre Online Classes

To keep providing creative and physical activities for young people, we have set up a short term of online classes for Mimbre Youth, specially adapted to be done at home, in small spaces and with no equipment.

The classes will include street dance taught by Natasha Khamjani followed by acrobatic strengthening and tricks that can be done at home, led by Lina Johansson, with some potential guest teachers coming in to share their tricks! Each class will also have a little creative task for the young people to respond to in their own time. Full details and sign-up link below.

Other Resources

We have also set up a resource section on our website where we will keep adding creative and physical activities we come across; things to move to, create or watch!

We have this one with activities that kids can do on their own, and this one that has activities for all different ages.

We have also collated resources here for how to give or receive help within your local community, including information on foodbanks and free meals, with a special focus on Hackney where we’re based.

Mimbre Youth online classes: full information and sign-up

There will be two options for how to take part, Zoom or YouTube, full details below. Please note that there is a limited amount of places for the Zoom classes and priority will be given to existing Mimbre Youth participants, but please tick the Zoom box if you would like a place and if full we’ll put you on a waiting list and you can follow the YouTube classes in the meanwhile!

+ Joining us on Zoom for the class, which will happen every Tuesday at a set time (class times below). Don’t worry if you haven’t used Zoom before, it is free to use, works on desktop, laptop, phone or tablet and we will email you details about how to access it as well as run a Zoom tutorial/test class on Monday for those who haven’t used it before. The advantage of the Zoom class is that the kids get a chance to see and motivate each other, have a chat with us, ask questions about the moves and tricks and we will also give them a little creative task each class which they can do and show to each other over the Zoom app.
+ Accessing the class on Mimbre Youth’s YouTube channel. We will record Natasha and Lina teaching the classes and publish them on Mimbre Youth’s YouTube channel each Wednesday, meaning that you can access them at a time that suits you. We will still set a creative task that the kids can do and they can email us pictures or videos to get feedback, but the YouTube set-up doesn’t allow us to give immediate feedback or interaction.

Details for classes and how to sign up

Start date: 21st April. Until 19th May (to start with, then we’ll see where we’re at and how it is going!)
We will continue to run the Zoom classes according to age groups on Tuesdays, but will start an hour earlier than normal:

+ Mini Group, 5 – 7-year-olds
3 pm – 3.45 pm
+ Midi Group, 8 – 10-year-olds
4 pm – 5 pm
+ Maxi Group, 11 – 14-year-olds
5 pm – 6 pm

All classes available from Wednesday afternoons on the Mimbre Youth YouTube channel, split into age recommendations.

How to attend
Please follow this link, to sign up, choosing if you want to attend classes through Zoom or YouTube. If unsure give Zoom a try, you can always revert to YouTube if the timings don’t work out. We will only send full details about the Zoom set-up, the log-in details and password if you have clicked Zoom on the form.

Some people might have seen issues around Zoom security in the media, but we want to reassure you that we have looked through this in detail and taken advice on how to keep the classes safe, including a password and a ‘virtual waiting room’ where Zsófi will sign everyone in individually before they can join the class, so that unauthorised people can’t join.

Prices – Free or Donation-based
In recognition that everyone’s circumstances are even more different than in ‘normal’ times, we will go ahead with these classes on a pay-what-you-can donation basis. For people who still have a job and an income, we would really appreciate weekly donations towards paying our teachers, but for people struggling with money at the moment, then pay-what-you-can might be nothing and that’s ok too.

We just want to see everyone again and provide what we can in terms of some physical and creative activity to all stay healthy both in mind and bodies.

New participants
We will prioritise available Zoom places to our existing Mimbre youth, but we will welcome new participants to any remaining places and we have no limit on people accessing the YouTube videos, so please share this email and sign-up link to other families or young people who you think might find these classes useful at this point in time!