Project Summary

Theatre has long been seen as a methodology for building inclusion and worth within communities. Many young people at some point feel excluded from their community and this approach is a tool that can support and develop skills within these young people. There is a strong sense, throughout Europe of the importance of accessibility into the arts to support social change. This project presented an opportunity to bring together diverse thinking and skill sets to develop a transferable program that organisations with less devising theatre and arts activities could access. TheArtTHee addressed the issues of social exclusion with young people through the tool of devised theatre. This process addresses may different skill sets; creative problem solving, soft skills, communication skills, team work and team building to name but a few. This empowers the young people, both excluded and mainstream to work together to find solutions. On an organisational level the needs addressed are developed competencies in delivering devising projects. For the end beneficiary development of strong local programs that are accessible was a desired outcome. The partners have strong programs and experience in promoting Youth work and innovative Youth projects.

Objectives

Development and sharing of best practise amongst cross sectorial youth based organisations. Many organisations can find themselves working on this type of project in a bubble and it’s important that a wide range of experiences and practises could be opened and shared amongst the partners and further. Better understanding of the difficulties beneficiaries experience in accessing creative devising programs that resonate with them. Through the project surveys and desk research a greater understanding of partner countries current offer was undertaken which helped focus the aims of creating tools to encourage greater opportunity and awareness of the strength of devising theatre programs in accessing the lived experience of marginalised youth. Creation of training modules that could be transferrable to other organisations. This output has been achieved via the two intellectual outputs. By creating these toolkits other organisations within the field of YOUth work but not necessarily skilled in theatre can access the creative possibility to add to their own program of interventions for vulnerable young people.

Results

The immediate outputs created by the project are the two documents: National Research & Training modules plus the youth devising guide book for accessing devising theatre as a useful tool in engage with marginalised youth. These documents will provide invaluable insights to both practitioners from the CCI’s and non-sector facilitators who wish to explore theatre devising as a tool for engaging young people. Brining together different approaches to the training has created a wide ranging set of training tools that will access non-theatre practitioners into these approaches with ease.

The local activities gave the partners the opportunity to try out these tools and record the process. The reports give a fascinating insight into the way that excluded young people can develop their soft skill sets though devising theatre. THis was an important aim of the project. To ensure that these approaches are accessible. The results here were local performances to audiences of the work undertaken. At Chickenshed additional performances were mounted of the local activities and elements of the project were taken into local secondary schools.