Penarth Nub News aims to support our community, promoting shops, businesses, charities, clubs and sports groups.

We will be profiling some of these businesses and organisations in a feature called 'Up Close in Penarth'.

Today we spoke with Penarthian Andy Marshall, who has been using his theatrical background to combat the COVID-19 mental health crisis.

Using drama to show businesses how they can approach mental health issues may seem like a novel idea. But the boardroom is not the strangest place Penarth's Andy Marshall has put his passion for theatre to good use.

"I spent five years working with prisoners with the theatre company Geese," he tells Nub News. "With everyone ranging from lifers (those with really long and serious sentences) to young offenders, we used drama as a tool to help people think about their lives.

"It was amazing. It was the most fantastic experience in terms of learning how to work with a group and use drama with people who really don't want to. But it was so popular with the prisoners and often really helped them grow."

Prior to this strange but formative stint, Andy had formally trained as an actor and theatre director. He then moved into teaching but became disillusioned with the education system.

"I love working with young people, and I was working with them on a creative subject - drama.

"But I became a teacher roughly at the time when a fundamental shift was beginning to take place in the school system. It all became about league tables and passing exams. It was stifling creativity and growth, and I didn't want to be part of that anymore."

Armed with the lessons mined from these experiences, Andy founded Active Learning Team.

"Active Learning Team is a training company that applies some of the techniques I had learnt in prisons to the corporate environment," he says.

"It uses drama as a tool to examine whatever it is we are focusing on. Initially, we predominantly used drama to illustrate how people can be excluded and discriminated against. But recently, partially because of my own struggles but also due to increased awareness, our main focus has been on mental health for the last five or six years."

The pressures of the modern world have caused a mental health crisis that impacts individuals both and the companies they work for. According to Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty, 70 million sick days were taken off last year due to mental illness, costing businesses up to an estimated £100 billion. The demand for Andy's service is clear.

"Our clients range from Morgan Stanley from charities like the Welsh Council for Voluntary Action," he says.

"Learning in a corporate environment can be very tedious, so we use drama to bring learning to life. We create fictional characters and have a group of managers interact with that character, helping them to begin seeing signs of mental illness."

When the pandemic struck, Andy (like many businesses) was forced to adapt. You might think that Active Learning would be ill-suited to Zoom, but Andy's virtual classes have been attended by all his previous clients and more.

"People are being forced to confront the importance of mental health during this time when it has deteriorated so rapidly," he says. "They are also seeing that our interactions with one another are taking place increasingly online, so in a way the programmes going virtual has been a really positive thing."

Speaking to Andy, I got the impression of a man who genuinely cares about the wellbeing of others. My inkling was confirmed when he told me he had been running free online mental health webinars during lockdown.

"I obviously want to make money - I'm a business. But I am genuinely passionate about what I do. So back in April, at the beginning of lockdown, I decided to do some free webinars that anyone could join.

"Obviously if it leads to some work, that's great - and it has - but I just wanted to put forward some principles and approaches that would support people's wellbeing at this difficult time."

Like many people who understand the importance of mental wellbeing, Andy has had his own demons to conquer. He says these reared their ugly heads during lockdown.

"During lockdown I got so low that at that point I said to myself: 'You spend your whole life telling people how to look after their mental health, you need to start practising your teachings on yourself.'

"And it works. It really does work."