Emotional Intelligence includes self-awareness and impulse control, persistence, zeal and motivation, empathy and social deftness. These are the qualities that mark people who excel: whose relationships flourish, who are stars in the workplace.

On of the basic tenets of our Re:Store work includes developing with the participants an understanding that there are many different intelligencies, other than intellectual or classical intelligence, and that these intelligencies inform the way that individuals learn about and interact with the world.

Individuals make sense of the events that occur throughout their lives by utilising the range of senses or intelligencies available to them, these include some or all of the following: visual, auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory and gustatory.

Running alongside these sensory intelligencies there is Emotional Intelligence - the basis of which involves an understanding of:

Intrapersonal Intelligence – an awareness of moods, feelings and mental states in ourselves.
Interpersonal Intelligence – the recognition of emotions in others.

What is required for both real learning and successful social interactions to occur are intellectual clarity and physical and emotional sensitivity. Therefore, real learning is developed when we understand, not only the academic whens, whys and wherefores, but also when we learn how to understand and utilize the full range of physical and emotional stimuli available to us. Only then can we, as individuals, learn to respond positively and creatively to both our own and the emotional states of others.

"Anyone can become angry—that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way—this is not easy."
- Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics

Theatre / Drama and Emotional Intelligence

Where Theatre and Drama processes link with the development of EI is in its ability to encourage young people to walk in another man’s shoes and to examine events from a number of different emotional perspectives. It also gives people space to consider the different courses of action the characters could have taken had they stopped for a moment and thought about the consequences of their decisions. This, in itself encourages the development of empathetic skills necessary for the growth of EI.

Again, we feel anger and fear without choice, but the virtues are modes of choice or involve choice.
Aristotle, the Nichomachean Ethics book 3

The programme that we have developed over the years has allowed young people themselves the time and space to stop and consider why people act the way they do.