The Happiness Project came from conversations with people who are involved with Curious Monkey’s Arriving project – people from all over the world seeking sanctuary and living in the North East, who come together 3 times a month for workshops, theatre trips and to eat together. Everyone is very different and there is a wealth of skills and interests. People in the group face many every day challenges – language barriers, long complicated asylum processes, housing, poverty, physical and mental health issues – dealing with all this can take up a lot of time and headspace.

“Many people find it hard to be happy.” said Belmira, a smiling bubbly Angolan woman “I know a way to make people in my community happy.” She had a brilliant idea which she shared with everyone.

The discussion opened up to others in the group and plenty more brilliant ideas began to flow – from children’s silent theatre projects to metamorphic massage courses. The Happiness Project was born: happiness and community cohesion – for people seeking sanctuary in Newcastle/Gateshead and others living in the same communities. Now through the Co-Creating Change commission it is a reality.

After receiving the commission in September 2019, members of the group pitched their ideas for how to bring happiness to their communities and three ideas emerged to form our Happiness Project, led by the three people who pitched them. The three strands of the project have been: a series of salsa and massage classes; a yoga retreat; and a cabaret-style event for older people. 

The yoga retreat happened in September 2020 and saw 14 members of the Arriving project spend two nights at Minsteracres Retreat Centre, doing yoga and spending time in peaceful nature. Victoria, who led the planning and facilitation of the yoga retreat, had never led yoga for a group of more than two people at a time before and had been nervous about facilitating a larger group, but after completing her Happiness Project felt so much more confident about her skills as a yoga instructor.

Belmira’s salsa classes have been happening on Zoom and, whilst we were away on the yoga retreat, we got to have an in-person salsa class and be guided through some self-massage. In October we had our final salsa and massage sessions in person at a venue in Newcastle.

MD’s cabaret event for older people was called ‘Happiness in the posh bottle’ and was an evening for people to dress up in their posh clothes, come out, have some food and be entertained. Members of the Arriving group helped serve them there were performances from the group and local artists.