In 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic forced youth theatre practitioners all around Europe to re-imagine their practice for an online world. While challenging, this context offered the opportunity to learn new skills and ways of working and resulted in some unique ways of engaging with young people online.
When the originally planned Youth Theatre Leaders’ Lab was unable to take place in person due to travel restrictions, we decided to adapt the programme to reflect this online context.
The Youth Theatre Leaders’ Lab was then held online as five interactive Zoom sessions hosted by Youth Theatre Ireland. These online sessions introduced participants to a European wide group of facilitators, supported them to grow their facilitation, partnership and collaboration skills and gain inspiration for developing youth theatre projects internationally, both online and in person.
Outside of the core sessions, participants were given the opportunity to develop their own idea for an online youth theatre project in partnership with a Europeen peer. They were encouraged to get the idea on its feet, via a small abount of micro-grant funding to research and test out their ideas.
The resulting projects included:
- ‘Acting Out’ Careers in Theatre Workshop: an online collaboration between artists and young people in Scotland and Norway, exploring opportunities for careers in design, producing and other ‘ non-performing’ roles. The workshop allowed young people to collaborate with peers internationally explore new career ideas and how these translate internationally.
- Researching Inclusive and Accessible Youth Theatre: This research project gathered an overview of inclusive youth theatre provision, exploring what is being offered in the UK, Ireland and Greece, taking inspiration and learning more about what is available and what is missing.
- ‘Blended Mobililty’ Research: A research project looking at how performance opportunities could be created from an online basis working towards potential in-person activity. Youth theatre participants in England, Ireland and Czechia took part in online workshops to explore how these projects could be developed.
“It was just wonderful to engage as a participant and to reflect on my own practice in the process. It also gave me a great toolbox to come away with in terms of new exercises and approaches to use with the young people that I work with.” – BUZZ Lab Participant