Youth Theatre is often required to justify its existence by the skills it offers to young people (oracy, creativity, teamwork) and the talent it develops for professional theatre.
These are useful, but I think there's something else it does that is much more important.
These are useful, but I think there's something else it does that is much more important.
Comments
We need somewhere for them to think about the world, safely. We need a platform for them to speak out.
We do ourselves a massive disservice if we only speak about our work in terms of skills and pipelines.
Why isn't it? Because it isn't recognised as such, because it's underfunded, and because we're not sustainable as a sector.
There is so much promise in theatre for young people as a force for change in our society. But it's largely untapped.
We think that a new national body for young people's theatre in England could have a transformative impact on the way we support the least-well resourced groups and help those larger companies still reliant on project grants to finally achieve sustainability.