We wanted to share our journey and story with you from our latest project Dancing with Dinosaurs! 

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Our group of awesome dancers were selected from YourSpace Marches, in Llay Wrexham. YourSpace is a wonderful autism charity that supports children with Autism (with/without diagnosis) and their families through activities and clubs (social/ holiday; expressive arts; Teens; toddlers), parent outreach support, sit in and respite service and family days out. 

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We were fortunate enough to take their regular expressive arts session on a Friday and run our Dancing with Dinosaurs project with the group of selected children for 8 weeks over the course of Summer 2022. 

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We we’re very thankful to have the support of 3-4 volunteer YourSpace staff each week to safeguard and make sure the children felt comfortable. One of the YourSpace volunteers Ieuan was super hands on and even performed himself- thank you so much Ieuan! 

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We were super lucky to partner with the incredible Jurassic Live team and their awesome animatronic life-sized dinosaurs! (Check out their webpage and social media platforms to watch a show near you.) They paid us three visits across the course of our 8-week project to meet and greet and have ultra-fun with the dinosaurs and our chosen group as well as incorporating and choreographing the dinosaurs themselves into our final dance piece! Wow; those dinos can really move! The children at YourSpace got the opportunity to get up close and personal with the dinosaurs and have a photoshoot with them too! 

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We have also been very grateful to partner with National Museum Wales based in Cardiff where they delivered a memorable, exciting, enthusiastic jam-packed virtual workshop to educate us in a cool way all about The World of Dinosaurs. Dan (our host from the museum in Cardiff) was fantastic and delivered the most interactive, charismatic workshop to our group as part of our first session. We learnt so much from this as it formed the basis of our first session and this provided the stimulus to create the choreographic piece thereafter.

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Not forgetting, two of our fantastic dance practitioners Amanda and Dina who led and delivered 8 stimulating, engaging, mentally and physically active sessions to formulate a movement creative piece which led us on a journey following a map through the jungle, a swamp, over a river, scouting for dinosaurs and lastly into the dinosaurs' cave!  

We also had another of our Eleni team members Hanna who led welsh language sessions to our dance pracs for Amanda and Dina to thread through their sessions weekly and create a bilingual project for the group. 

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The girls at Eleni worked their socks off and had a lot of fun along the way. An enormous THANK YOU to our Eleni practitioners for their energy and commitment each week to both the project and the children. The children really built a special bond with Amanda and Dina and we are so happy to say that the feedback we received was so positive and uplifting, transforming and developing the growth of the children at YourSpace - Da Iawn Diolch! 

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The final performance was housed at YourSpace Resource Centre in Llay itself. We had a mega fun day outside in the sun, the children practiced their dance, before performing in front of a live audience made up of family, friends and the local community at Llay. What a day! As a special thank you Eleni gave each of the children a personalised t-shirt, a dinosaur goody bag filled with dino toys, their photo with the Jurassic Live life-sized dinosaur and Eleni merchandise in a funky dino bag. We all then got to celebrate and mark the event with a super awesome dinosaur themed cake- a special dear thankyou to GingerBearCo cake company-Sian for whipping up a delicious, incredible looking cake. What a treat! 

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We aren’t done seeing dino’s just yet... watch this space for more dino fun as we continue into the second strand of Dancing with Dinosaurs, this time in Denbighshire. We are mega excited to begin a new venture and journey with resettled families. Part 2 coming soon!