"...opening the eyes and ears of youngsters to the cultural riches of the North"

Theatre Hullabaloo is proud to be part of Arts Council England’s national portfolio of organisations funded to bring great art to children and young people. You can read more about how we work and about some of the other organisations in the North working with young people in their See, Touch, Listen, Experience case study. 

Read the blog and case study on the Arts Council's website. 

Theatre Hullabaloo's website.

An Open Letter to the Chief Executive at Arts Council England

On 2 April 2014, Action for Children’s Arts and Theatre for Young Audiences UK sent an open letter to Alan Davey, Chief Executive at Arts Council England, raising the collective concerns about the positioning of the arts for young people in their recent This England Report, which responds to the significant debate on regional funding that has been taking place in the sector over the past months.

The original letter can be found on the Action for Children's Arts Blog.

To:
Alan Davey, Chief Executive, Arts Council England

From:Action for Children’s Arts
Theatre for Young Audiences UK

Dear Alan Davey,

We are writing on behalf of the membership organisations, Theatre for Young Audiences UK (TYA UK) a member of Global Association ASSITEJ and Action for Children’s Arts (ACA), who between them represent more than 400 independent artists and organisations committed to the arts for children and young people.

We are writing to raise our collective concerns about the positioning of the arts for young people in the recent This England report.

As an artistic community dedicated to developing the arts for, by and with children and young people, we welcome the centrality of Goal 5 in the Arts Council’s 10 year Strategic Framework. We share your belief that every child and young person should have the opportunity to experience the richness of the arts. We also share your concerns about the provision of non-core arts subjects in the curriculum, as drama and theatre particularly, become increasingly marginalised within schools.

In Great Art and Culture for Everyone, Goal 5 is defined in terms of actions and outcomes focused on the ambition that children and young people have the best current and future artistic lives they can have and that ‘they are able to develop their artistic capabilities and engage with, and shape, the arts’.

We support the view that the arts should be a holistic and enriching part of childhood, not just skewed to educational and participatory activities. There is no doubt that the centrality of children and young people’s entitlement to culture within the strategy is a significant move forwards.

However, the opening statement under Goal 5 of the This England report reads as follows:

“Children and young people represent both the creative talent of tomorrow, and our future audiences”(pg 29)

Whilst this statement is true, the fact that no other entitlement of children is outlined, which recognises children as creative beings; as participants, as artists, as decision makers as well as audiences, now, is hugely problematic.

Fundamentally, as you know, arts experiences at their best are a way of investigating and understanding our world and our feelings and children and young people’s engagement is no less important, we would argue more so, than that of those older than them.

For those of us who are fortunate enough to work in this field, there is little doubt that quality early arts experiences inspire hearts, challenge minds and awaken imaginations in a profound way. The role of young people as ‘future audiences and future talent’ is disappointingly regressive and significantly out of kilter with ACE’S own Great Art for Everyone and with the artistic community who know and understand the value of work for, by and with children and young people.

Documents such as This England are important statements about the role of culture in our national life and influence the policies that will shape our cultural diet in the future. We therefore ask you to review this articulation of policy and recognise that our shared primary objective should be to provide children and young people with art of the highest quality because it should be a crucial and enriching part of everyone’s childhood.

We look forward to your response.

Yours sincerely,

David Wood OBE, Chair, ACASteve Ball, Chair, TYA England
Nina Hajiyianni, Chair, TYA UK

On behalf of the membership of TYA UK and ACA.

Two Days in York

Stuart Mullins

Stuart Mullins is a freelance director, and the Director of Tiny Treasures, Theatre Hullabaloo’s collection of three short plays based on the lives of young carers. Here he talks about two days that the Creative Team spent in York with the young people from the Young Carers Revolution (YCR) learning about their stories and developing ideas for the plays:

Reflecting on our two days in York with the Young Carers Revolution (YCR) it occurs to me that they are our (the ‘our’ being the creative team) commissioners. It is the YCR who have asked us to create this new piece of theatre. It’s therefore a priority for me, that as experienced theatre practitioners we must discuss, explore and articulate what a creative process is and we must enable them, as commissioners, to give us useful and relevant critical feedback. Most importantly having done this, we must listen.

Day one was spent meeting the YCR and getting to know them. I felt they had to learn to trust us all, but most importantly they had to trust Kevin Dyer, the playwright. The afternoon was spent facilitating just this:
• It was about getting used to Kevin asking them questions
• It was about understanding that ideas grow, morph, take on new forms
• It was about the fact that drama is a wonderful mix of truth and fiction, and that metaphor and themes communicate far more than issues.

In between day one and day two on the Sunday, Kevin and I spent time eating and exploring what the narrative and form could be. We found ourselves in a café called the Bike Shed near the old city gates - a place which served good coffee a fine breakfast, but most importantly gave us the space to think and talk. From this time Kevin embraced the original idea of a three part structure and created the skeleton outline for Tiny Treasures.

On day two, the actors and I spent time exploring and improvising the first two parts. The actors, Lasana and Amy, worked well as a partnership, pushing and provoking each other. We achieved a great deal in a short time, presenting our young commissioners with enough material to generate their feedback. I was delighted to see that they not only felt it represented their lives accurately (much credit to Kevin for this), but that it also inspired them with its form.

Ultimately, following our two days together:
• Kevin left with a clear idea of what he wanted to write
• Inspired Youth were excited by the process and the potential outcome
• The young carers felt that they had been listened to
• And I felt excited by the show I’m going to direct!

What next? Miranda, Kitty Winter (the Movement Director) and myself will audition for the two actors, one to play a 35 year old mum and the other to play Jamie the main character aged 13 to 18. This is due to happen on April 1st, not a bad omen I hope 
Also, Kevin’s first draft has just landed in my inbox, so I’m looking forward to getting my teeth into that.

Stuart Mullins
Freelance Director, Tiny Treasures

World Day of Theatre for Children

From everyone at Theatre Hullabaloo, we'd like to wish you all a happy World Day of Theatre for Children and Young People!

Theatre Hullabaloo believe that going to the theatre for the first time is an important thing to do and should be part of everyone's childhood. To support this belief, in 2013 we launched our Theatre Firsts Campaign to help celebrate both children's first theatre experiences and adults first memories of going to the theatre.

#theatrefirstie booth

Today, on World Day of Theatre for Children, we are launching our TakeOff #theatrefirstie North East 2014 Campaign. Our #theatrefirstie booth will be spending a month at each of our seven consortium venues where audience members will be asked to:

1. Write their first memory of going to the theatre with us on a blackboard
2. Take a photo of themselves holding it in our booth on their smart phone
3. Share it with us on our TakeOff Facebook or Twitter pages with the hashtag #theatrefirstie 

Everyone who posts a photo will be entered into a competition to win a #theatrefirstie goodie bag and there will be a prize available for an audience member at each of the venues the pod visits. The #theatrefirstie pod will then spend a final week at our TakeOff Festival, Durham in October 2014.

We hope the campaign will raise awareness of how important going to the theatre is, especially amongst children and families in the North East. There is a lot of great theatre for children and young audiences happening in venues right across the region, from Berwick in the North to Richmond in the South and of course everything in between. 

You will find the #theatrefirstie pod at the following venues over the next seven months: ARC Stockton, Arts Centre Washington, Darlington Civic Theatre, Gala Durham, Middlesbrough Town Hall, Town Hall Theatre Hartlepool and The Witham Barnard Castle.

To get the ball rolling, Miranda and I have both done our #theatrefirstie:

If you want to find out about all the great shows happening in venues near you, please visit Theatre Hullabaloo's TakeOff Website, which promotes all the work happening for 0 - 16 year olds in the North East.

We hope to see your face or your child's face on our facebook or twitter page soon!

Dorcas
Communications Manager, Theatre Hullabaloo

Our New Show about Young Carers

At Theatre Hullabaloo, a child-centred approach is at the heart of everything we do; from working with the very best creative teams who specialise in making work for specific age ranges, to working with children throughout the creative process to inform the work we make. Our latest production, Tiny Treasures, is no exception and pushes this process to a whole new level.

The production, written by award winning playwright Kevin Dyer, is a collection of three short plays based on the lives and experiences of a group of young carers* and young adult carers (8-25 years) from York, called the Young Carers Revolution (YCR). The YCR provides empowerment and influence to young carers, and although administered by York Young Carers Service, the group has its own autonomy and sets its own agenda for projects and campaign themes. So far, YCR have made films, documentaries, street art and lyrics about what it is to be a young carer.

Their journey with Theatre Hullabaloo began in 2012 when a group of YCR came to see Theatre Hullabaloo's production of “Angel” at York St John University. The show really struck a chord with the young carers as it was a play about a serious subject (the unexpected friendship between a young girl and an old woman she meets with dementia) that was told in a sensitive and witty way. They decided that this would be the perfect way to share their stories with primary school children across the country and approached Theatre Hullabaloo to see if we would be keen to make a play with them - we were!

Working with Inspired Youth, who run the Young Carers Revolution, we invited YCR to come to our TakeOff Festival to see the brilliant “Mess” by Caroline Horton, a play about anorexia that we hoped would help us all to start to think about how we could address serious issues with humour and poignancy. We then ran a number of sessions asking the young people to tell us what the play should be about and together we started to create characters and potential story lines. We also played a lot of games and getting-to-know you exercises so that the creative team could understand the stories we needed to tell. Super powers and the lessons in fairy tales were things we kept going back to. YCR also worked with a brilliant illustrator called Becki Harper, who they commissioned to design the image for the show, and also chose the title - Tiny Treasures.

Stuart Mullins, the Director, has led the drama sessions with Kevin Dyer, the Writer, and two brilliant actors, Lasana and Amy, who both have the experience of being young carers. The group also have worked with Designer Bek Palmer to create mood boards for the set and costume designs and to look at set models and learn more about the process of theatre design. YCR will also have the opportunity to work with Sound Designer, Simon McCorry, to work out the sound landscape of the play.

So what is it that makes this project really exciting and unique? It's that all the creative decisions about the production are made by this group of young people; everything from informing and choosing the image for the show, to helping discover the stories and characters and even thinking about what it might look and sound like – how much more child-centred can you get? 

We all feel really privileged to be collaborating with such a brilliant bunch of young people and look forward to sharing our treasure trove of plays with schools in York and the North East in June.

Dorcas
Communications Manager, Theatre Hullabaloo

*For those of you that don't know, Young Carers are young people who help to look after someone at home. They might help to look after a brother or sister, parent or grandparent with an illness, disability, mental health problem or a problem with alcohol/drugs.

Another Two Weeks at Theatre Hullabaloo

Here we are again with the second instalment of my experience at Theatre Hullabaloo! Well, what can I tell you since the last time?

I have been working on updating the company’s database - hopefully now all the contacts we have will be more accessible. I have attended a digital strategy workshop on how we can use social media as a way of promoting the business and making the public more aware of our brand. I have also been designing Facebook headers for the Theatre Hullabaloo page, as well as finishing off layout designs that I had previously started and attending Devoted and Disgruntled at Live Theatre - a conversation about the future of theatre with others working in the sector. Find out more on their website.

Last week I was hit with a terrible case of ‘Man Flu’, the girls were obviously sympathetic when I came back, when I was chuffed to discover that I had been given the lead on our ‘Theatre Firsts’ campaign. This will have me finding out all about people’s first theatre experiences at our seven consortium venues across the North East and sharing it on social media and our dedicated Theatre Firsts Blog. We will be collecting memories from children aged 0-100 years, so get your thinking caps on to remember your first memories of going to the theatre when you were young!

Pat on the back to me, who implemented a postal system that will now save the company money and a walk to the Post Office (more than likely that would have been me).

And last but not least, I am still involved in the Young Carers Project for which I’ve designed a schools flyer and a Facebook header image.  I’m looking forward to seeing the kids at Young Carer’s Revolution again to get their views and opinions on what we have been doing. It’s never a dull moment with these inspirational young people and hopefully we will have the opportunity to play more games.

Oh, and by the way....the theme is hats for my blogs. So here is another photo with myself and my lovely colleague Diann shouting “ARRRRGH, Me HEARTIES” as we pretend to be The Night Pirates,  one of Theatre Hullabaloo’s previous productions.

Read more about the Young Carer’s project on their blog – http://youngcarersrevolution.wordpress.com/

Till next time, coming to a PC near you. The next instalment is currently being experienced as you read this.
Mark

My Time at Theatre Hullabaloo

What would you do if you were a unicorn called Frederick, with an ice cream cone for a horn, and paws instead of hooves paddling at the beach, and had just spotted a donkey trundling along…?

This was actually the script for a word game when I met the young people at Inspired Youth - just one of the many things I have been doing since joining the team at Theatre Hullabaloo for my three month internship from Teesside University. This diverse role has had me proof reading a grant application from the arts council; updating and collating information for the database; contacting venues for figures on the last show (Luna); designing feedback sheets and selling letters; attending the finance meeting with the board of directors; proof reading website design applications and assessing our own website for improvement; attending a consortium meeting; sorting through applications for the TakeOff Festival from companies around the world; and have had the honour of feeling humbled at the courage of some young carers at Inspired Youth - Listening to them articulate their problems and being invited to join in has to be one the experiences I will always remember.

Oh and did I say that I’ve only been here two and a half weeks so far?

Never being afraid to tackle a challenge, I am grateful that the team at Hullabaloo has thrown me into the deep end to discover whether there will be anything left of me but bubbles on the surface. Thankfully so far I’m treading water! Bring it on! I could not have asked for a better bunch of professionals to work with. I find the day goes really quickly with the amount of work I have to do, but more importantly I am taken seriously as someone with ideas and skills in areas - it is certainly rare for interns not to go into a firm and become the new tea making machine. Thankfully this is not the case.

Watch out for my next instalment coming soon to a PC near you!
Mark