This Is How Strong We Are!

All girls acrobatics group Strong and Flying in Hackney are celebrating their strength, sending inspiration to women and girls across the world for International Women’s Day.

There are still a lot of battles left to fight for women and girls before reaching equality, some of which we will comment on in this blog over the next week, in acknowledgement of the centenary of  International Women’s Day. But first I would like to celebrate the achievements of our young girl acrobats.

‘Strong and Flying’ started in Autumn 2009, with support from Rosa, Southern Housing Foundation and Activate, as a girls only acrobatics and acrobalance group encouraging young girls of all sizes and abilities to discover their own strength.

With this group we looked for ways of building a positive influence to counteract all the negative pressures and expectations bombarding young girls today. Encouraging strength and ability (opposed to looks and appearances) and with an Everyone-Can-Do-It attitude, our aim has been to help to make them feel more confident about who they are and what they can achieve. We are now in our second year of running this group, with plenty of girls who have been part of it from the start. We have discussed female role-models, what being strong can mean, encouraging and supporting each other and at the basis of it all tumbled, cartwheeled, created human pyramids and enjoyed all the amazing things our bodies can achieve!

The image above is their message to the women of the world for the Guardian’s “Global Women’s Voices” campaign (which you can see here ) as they hope to inspire other women and girls to realise that they are strong, in so many ways,  and that anything is possible if we work together.

Together with Joanna Ingham the girls and the teachers wrote this poem, listing and celebrating the different attributes of their bodies:

My Body

My body is as flexible as a flower.

My body is as hard as steel.

My body is as fast as an ice-skater.

My body is leaping, like a tiger.

My body is as strong as my uncle doing push-ups.

My body is as active as electricity and David Beckham.

My body is light as a feather and fit as a fiddle.

My body is rubber, like an elastic band.

My body is as fast as a cheetah hunting for its prey.

My body is as strong as a lion and my dad.

My body is good at balancing, like an ant on a tree.

My body is growing, like a plant.

My body is as slow as the number 236 bus …

and just as shaky.

My body is as good as everybody else’s.

My body is my mountain, the source of my happiness.

The 27^th of March the young girls will present a public performance with their acrobatics and creative skills, 4 pm at Chat’s Palace in Hackney. Anyone interested to come, please contact us for full details and an invitation!

You can also see a short documentary following the first year of the programme here