Please help us to change lives... Our next major project commencing January 2010 will provide multi-sensory workshops and innovative new art work for people with severe learning and mobility difficulties, challenging behaviour and complex needs. We have seen... •People who have never spoken find their voice - Leo, who is 5 and has Down's Syndrome, can't wait to share with his mother tales of mermaids, pirates, spacemen, fantastical creatures that he has met during an InnerSense workshop. •People who live in their own worlds engage positively and creatively in a group - teachers tell us that two young people from Kennel Lane special school, participate more in an InnerSense session than in any other aspect of their lives. •Someone who rarely moves will reach up to catch a feather and dance - Hannah, who is a wheelchair user and has no speech, was so enchanted by our video wall rail journey that her carers took her on a real train for the first time ine her life. •Someone else, usually unmotivated and locked in a world of silence, responds with laughter and song to a character, projections or a lighting change. These workshops enhance lives by: •Offering people with severe learning difficulties the opportunity to participate in the arts •Improving confidence for people with low self esteem •Enabling people with communication difficulties to explore new ways of self expression •Promoting integration and inclusion The beneficiaries of the project; (approx. 105 users plus support staff) are primarily those with the greatest needs and highest dependency levels. They include people who have limited access to meaningful activity in the community, people with severe autism, some with extremes of challenging behaviour, people with severe sight and hearing impairment and/or physical disability alongside their learning difficulties, people whose quality of life is often limited and poor. We constantly see profound and positive life changing effects on people with PMLD: The workshops take place at South Hill Park Arts Centre, Bracknell where, each week, a new theatrical and creative multi-sensory environment is constructed. Instruments, props, lighting and projections complement the theme. There are 3-5 workshops each day facilitated by a team of three accomplished professional dancers, actors and musicians. These enriching environments inspire incredible responses from these people who are the most disenfranchised in our communities. These talented creative people are often held back by the constraints of multiple disabilities, with complex needs that are hard to reach. We can and do reach them, regularly helping them create profound work. £25000 would enable us to employ a team of highly skilled arts and disability workshop facilitators, providing upto five workshops a day, four days a week for ten weeks.