About Lifted & Gifted Education

Lifted & Gifted provides bespoke performing arts teaching for schools and communities. Our ethos uses performing arts to empower children to learn, communicate effectively, increase their self-confidence, and succeed both in and out of the classroom.

Lifted & Gifted’s teaching methods are designed with all children in mind, including those who have been diagnosed with special educational needs (SEN).

To learn more about how and why Lifted & Gifted came into being, please meet our founder and CEO, Tanya Obeng…

Tanya has always been passionate about the arts. She danced and acted from a young age, later training at Bretton Hall and the Actors Centre before becoming a professional dancer, actress and choreographer. However, while she enjoyed the glitz and glamour of professional performing, Tanya’s true passion turned out to be education, and the profound influence of the arts on children’s ability to learn and thrive in an academic environment. Having struggled with her own confidence through school, Tanya knows first-hand what a difference the arts can make to all children.

“Drama gave me a voice, and taught me to believe that I was capable of anything I set my mind to. It made a huge difference to my academic experience”.

After a long stint teaching dance and drama to GCSE and A-level, and working with SEN units at various secondary schools, Tanya founded Lifted & Gifted in order to share her learnings around arts and education more broadly.

“Children diagnosed with SEN can find it extremely challenging to retain information, meaning that exams and assessments – in fact, the whole academic experience – can be profoundly stressful, and instil in them a sense of failure that may last well into adulthood. "

“Lifted & Gifted’s aim is to spread a new wave of teaching that understands how experiential learning through the arts can fundamentally change our ability to comprehend and remember. Teaching maths through music or history through drama is not only a lot of fun; it has a proven impact on exam results. It’s such a joy to see children’s confidence go sky high, and to watch students who have previously struggled start to blossom and enjoy

their education. And it makes life a whole lot easier and more enjoyable for the teachers, too!”

Tanya Obeng, Lifted and Gifted Founder and CEO

Tanya trains all Lifted & Gifted’s many talented teachers personally, and also delivers in-house training for school teachers and community group leaders. Tanya is also an accomplished and confident speaker who regularly delivers inspiring talks to teachers, students, and community groups around the role of the arts in education, and more broadly.

If you’d like to bring her particular brand of magic to your organisation or event, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known

….. Oscar Wilde