WHO ARE WE?
Life in Motion started as a bunch of TV bods who were brilliant at dancing and choreography, all led by Julie Kavanagh, based in Manchester. But now, it's blossomed into a company that tells the stories of the forgotten and hidden people in our society.
Life In Motion isn't afraid to go deep into the dark corners of society—the stories of the forgotten and left behind. The ones who often get ignored, Care Experienced, Adopted, Neurodiverse and Excluded young people of the North. These guys are seen but not heard, and Life in Motion wants to change that.
Julie Kavanagh is the creative who has brought together a group of busy mums who are multi-talented and diverse. They've got kids with additional needs, adopted children, and some who've been kicked out of mainstream school for being their lively, outspoken selves.
These ladies are pushing the boundaries of working from home with kids who love a door slam, throw in a few swear words, and life jogs along swimmingly.
WHAT ARE WE?
Life In Motions stories venture off and away from the preconceived notions of a working-class existence and the subcultures that run alongside them—giving a voice to those who never had the chance to make it off the first rung of life’s ladder.
Our passion for honest and complex stories born from the working classes will delve into and challenge the stereotypes bound upon them by circumstance and many lack off’s. Or to be fair, the constraints our society can entrap them in. A place where we continue generation after generation to sidestep many of society's responsibilities and still plough all the ‘blames’ onto the single Mums of the world. A place where the miss placed shame and blame game thrives. A murky world where often the easily forgotten ‘other half’ is on their toes, long gone and never challenged or scrutinised just as much as Mum.
We will celebrate the Neuro Diverse community as we experience it. We won’t stop just at Autism and ADHD. We want to highlight the brutality of living in a world you are often excluded from or struggle to access fully. Our Neurodivergent commitment is not a tick-box on-trend statement from us. We live it; our families are impacted by the miss understanding and the pressure to conform. We are the warrior mums rocking and rolling with our kids at 2 am in all mighty meltdowns as they scream at the world for not understanding and excluding them.
WHAT'S IT ABOUT?
Currently developing projects about Adoption, disrupted family attachments, community relationships, school exclusions, the institution of the Care System & Neurodiversity in all their glorious complex beauty.
Life In Motion will explore stories where their subjects are considered ‘at risk’ with the long tentacles of complexity this causes. Those who have encountered the Looked After Care System, Adoption, failed education, exclusions from community and society, the impact of intergenerational poverty, substance addiction and mental health illnesses will all be celebrated in our work. Those things don’t just happen to people; it's a series of circumstances, a Life In Motion that is bestowed upon a family where it can feel like a constant pile-on in an unforgiving world.
JULIE'S BIO
Julie Kavanagh, a proper dance legend in the TV industry here in Manchester for over 20 years. Julie's got a track record of creating movement-based stories for the screen that's second to none.
She's produced content for international gaming studios across multiple platforms, and she's come up with choreography and movement concepts for 100’s of household brands and famous artists in TV commercials, music videos, fashion shows, live events and dramas. She's even generated some brand-linked dance crazes before TikTok was a thing.
Julie has dyslexia and had a hard time learning in school. The education system failed her, but she didn't let that hold her back. She's got a love for telling stories in unusual ways, and she's adapted that skill to cater to those who rarely get a voice – the unrepresented and the excluded.
Julie's a single mum of two adopted children. The school system refused to understand her adopted children's complex early life experiences and refused to work with specialist adoption social workers and therapists. Leaving her with a unique insight into how those failed by the system end up and she's hear to tell their stories.
WHY NOW?
Rarely do we hear from Children and Young people who are Care Experienced and have now moved on to Adopted Families or Kinship Care. Given the current public interest in Neuro Diversity, inclusion, and voices for the underrepresented, it's imperative to give Adopted young people the space to tell their stories and to speak their truth. They will be put front and centre of the current projects we are developing.
Adopted young people will always speak their truth, often through their behaviour. It’s questionable if they are heard; by challenging common misconceptions about adoption, childhood behaviour, and launching anyone who dares utter the words “have you tried a sticker chart”, we will develop stories that will help promote a more nuanced and empathetic understanding of some of our children's challenges. Instead of lazily assuming a child causing chaos in school and the community is "naughty" or has made "poor choices”, it's essential to consider the underlying factors driving their behaviour. What’s going on for the child? What does their world look like?
In the past, unmarried mothers were often forced to give their children up for adoption due to social stigma and lack of support. Adoption has moved on in the UK; the landscape now looks very different. Forced adoptions are still happening, but it’s a far cry from the unmarried young mothers of yesteryear. TV Programmes or stories around Adoption lean towards a ‘nice,’ sanitised account. We struggle to ‘hear’ the stories from the child’s voice. It’s hard to see anything in the media relating to Childhood Developmental Trauma and pregnancy alcohol exposure with their eye-watering large numbers directly linking to Neurodivergent conditions, school exclusions and being failed by education altogether. Of which the adoption community has a disproportionally significant high representation.
In the year 2022, 92,874 Children were Looked After in the UK. 6,820 of these children left Care through Adoption or a Special Guardianship Order, (Kinship Care).
This is repeated every year. Where are their voices? That’s many children each year with no voice, unrepresented in our communities, invisible in plain sight in our education system and more importantly, rarely given a true narrative in the media. We think it's time that narrative changed. We think it's time to shine a substantial beaming light on Adopted children’s stories, told from the child’s voice, not the parents; we want to celebrate our amazing children, show their lion's heart courageous beauty, and let them tell you, for many their world is not always FINE.
