Our history

Antidote was set up by a group of people, from diverse professional backgrounds, who saw a need to apply the latest understandings of human nature to the challenge of creating a healthier and more sustainably prosperous society.

Antidote’s focus was on emotional literacy, which came to be defined as:

The practice of interacting in ways that build understanding of our own and others’ emotions, then using this understanding to shape our actions.

In January 1997, the organisation ran a conference, on Emotional Development and the School Curriculum, which led to the organisation’s focus on children and young people.

A discussion at The Fourth R conference in the following year showed that little was known about how the various processes that might promote emotional literacy could be integrated so as to achieve a cumulative and sustainable impact on a school’s environment for learning.

This led to the setting up of the Emotional Literacy Initiative, a collaboration between Antidote, Gallions Primary School in Beckton and Lister Community School in Plaistow, which was designed to:

• demonstrate how emotional literacy could enhance learning and well-being
• generate models and strategies for promoting emotional literacy that could be used by schools across the UK.

The Initiative started in January 2001 and concluded at the end of March 2005. One of its products was Antidote’s on-line School Emotional Environment for Learning Survey (SEELS).

Antidote is now working to disseminate the models it developed through the Initiative to schools around the UK, and to find ways of applying these models in other settings.