After a year of the COVID pandemic and being predominantly in a lockdown situation, this year’s Wellbeing Wednesdays for the BGU community were well and truly needed and took place successfully in March. Unfortunately, the 2020 Wellbeing Wednesdays were cut short due to the first imposed national lockdown and the programme of activities arranged across the campus all had to be cancelled from midway through the month. So, to ensure this didn’t happen again, this year we did things a little differently and hatched plans to create a raft of experiences for staff and students, which could be enjoyed and interacted with remotely.
The five Wednesdays in March were tailored to the following themes:-
- World Wildlife Day
- National Pack Your Lunch Day
- St. Patricks Day
- BGU World Poetry Day
- National Crayon Day
On each of these days, a range of sessions from both external and internal stakeholders were offered and included puppetry workshops, laughter yoga, financial guidance, story-telling, sing-a-longs, mindfulness practices, competitions and poetry readings to name a few. Every week a chuckle, joke page was posted on the internal portal to uplift people at the start of the day and several initiatives ran throughout the month such as a 31 Day Mindfulness challenge and Mindful Rainbow Walk which people could engage with as and when they wanted.
We are delighted that during quite an unsettling time, people were keen to participate and found different aspects of Wellbeing Wednesdays both fun and supportive and not onerous on their already busy workloads. Prizes (with thanks to CELT) including a dancing, musical leprechaun, poetry books, mindfulness books, chocolates, mindfulness stones, pocket hugs, rainbow lights and games have been distributed to the winners of various competitions.
Next year, we are hoping that many of the sessions will again be run face-to-face but until then, we would just like to thank everyone who supported and contributed to the Wellbeing Wednesdays. It has been so important for people to find some moments to relax, reflect and recharge and just to support staff and students during this incredibly busy, restless period of time.
For further information, some great resources, including Mindfulness practices can be found on the Resilience Toolkit.
(Below photo - St. Patrick’s Day Prizes)
