How Kate Nash took on the bullies

POP star Kate Nash tells how her own trauma inspired her to lead a campaign to help troubled teenagers through music.

British pop star Kate Nash. Picture: Supplied

A YOUNG girl with short red hair stands in front of a classroom of fellow pupils, clutching a microphone. Quietly, with head bowed, she sings "I don't think anyone should have to go through what I had to."

It's a song she has written herself. The words are about how she has been bullied.

At the end of the song, she finally looks up with a little smile and says: "People are so ignorant, but I am proud."

The girl is performing at one of Kate Nash's Rock '*' Roll For Girls After School Clubs - think Jack Black's School of Rock meets Glee and you get an idea of what it's all about.

During the past two years the Brit Award-winning pop star has, along with a group of like-minded female musicians, been working with schools around the country, teaching teenage girls to play instruments and write songs in an effort to bolster their self-esteem and emotional health in the process.

The first stage of the project culminated in a show featuring the girls and Kate at the Queen Elizabeth Halls in London last December.

During workshops, teenagers are encouraged to write about anything that is important to them and then sing their own words to music they play along with Kate and her colleagues. The girl I have just watched on video was singing about being bullied for being a redhead - just like Kate, who is a natural redhead, so feels a particular empathy for the youngster's situation.

And she is acutely aware, from personal experience, of how tough life can be for young girls. She was bullied at school and on one occasion a group of girls locked her in a cupboard for an hour. It was the lowest point of a year of "bitchy little events".

"That's really sad, isn't it? I was 16 at that point. Girls - kids - can be mean. It was a power thing. It was done jokily, like it wasn't a big deal, while I was locked in there just crying" she says.

By 19 she was thrust into stardom, with a No 1 platinum-selling album and a Brit award. But the subsequent pressures of a relentless tour schedule - and comments she endured about her weight and general appearance - brought on a breakdown.

She also battled obsessive compulsive disorder and retreated from the spotlight to deal with it.

"I think that being creative, writing music for example, is the healthiest way to deal with your problems. If you get out how you feel, you've achieved something and you can feel proud of yourself" she said

Kate, now 25, uses the classes - the lyric sessions especially - as a way of addressing the girls' struggles with their anxieties without sitting down and asking them to talk about their problems.

"They do open up, they do want to tell you what's bothering them. You get through the tears and then you have a really fun lesson."

The girls really do lay their emotions out on the table, says Kate, often without realising.

"One of them got really upset during a songwriting exercise about what makes you happy, what makes you sad and so on. She said, 'I get really sad when someone ignores you and you don't know what you've done but they just keep ignoring you.' Then she added, 'I hate it when my mum ignores me.' I felt that was so awful."

The project is proving especially powerful at a time when the emotional health and wellbeing of teenage girls is of increasing concern. The think-tank Demos recently published a report into the self-esteem of girls which found that anxiety and unhappiness among teens had risen considerably in recent years.

Girls are more anxious than boys about their appearances and careers, and a celebrity culture that places a premium on good looks.

The report also said that teenage years see a concentration of behavioural problems. At the heart of the growing sense of unease about teenage wellbeing is plummeting levels of self-esteem.

One of the Demos report's recommendations is that girls should be encouraged to build positive relationships with peers and that the negative effects of peer pressure should be eased by promoting and protecting extracurricular activities.

Kate has seen how supportive teenagers can be. "Girls have a reputation for bitchiness, but in a safe environment that isn't the case." Music broke down social barriers, she says. "Some were geeks, others were musical theatre kids. They'd always applaud each other and when someone got upset, they'd all help out."

Lucie Russell, director of policy and campaigns at Young Minds, a charity supporting young people's mental health, says that low self-esteem during adolescence doesn't automatically lead to long-term mental health problems but it is undeniably a risk factor.

"We're all on a continuum from feeling pretty good, to not so good, right through to not being able to cope. It is especially pronounced in young people who are on an emotional rollercoaster with hormones and all the transition that happens with growing up.

"If you've got low self-esteem, you are going to find it harder to cope. What's really important is building young people's emotional resilience, and that's what Kate is doing" she said.

While there has always been a lot of competition between girls, it's been made worse by online technology and how it's abused.

Russell says: "Take cyber-bullying and things like Facebook hate groups. Research is showing it is happening more with girls than boys.

"Doing something wholesome like music, away from all the online devices, is great."

The Rock '*' Roll For Girls Club is the kind of thing that schools should be doing more of, she says.

"There's an unrelenting focus on academia and getting results, but schools should also be about developing character and resilience."

It's certainly something that Kate feels would have been invaluable when she was dealing with her emotional problems. She is planning to extend the workshops to other schools and release an After School Club album through her own record label.

"It's all about building self-confidence," says Kate. "The class is a safe environment where girls aren't judged.

"Music is about opinion and nobody's right or wrong. Writing a song is like being in a movie - it makes you feel as if something is happening. If more girls feel entitled to do that, they'll be having fun in healthy, positive ways."