Our Voices, Our Choices: Social Action Project

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Our Voices, Our Choices: Social Action Project

Project Summary

During the Spring term, young people in our Estate-based Youth Theatre (EbYT) groups took part in

a big social action project. Following the success of last year’s ‘#itmakesme’ social action project,

we decided to develop an annual, borough-wide event which brings all of our young people

together to share their projects for social action causes. This year the project was called ‘Our

Voices, Our Choices’ and was made possible by support from Young Hackney’s Youth Opportunity

Fund. The project was coordinated by Nadya Bettioui, with the EbYT delivery team supporting

across the term. The final event was produced by Georgia Gill, who also created the project’s

branding and marketing materials. Young people were involved in the decision-making at all stages

of the project, choosing their own topics and artforms, helping to plan the project and the final

event, as well as working with staff to develop the design for the marketing materials. They really

valued the opportunity to be involved in the process.

When planning the project, young people identified that they do not often have the opportunity to

express their opinions on the important issues in society and decisions which affect their futures to

the decision-makers in Hackney. They wanted to take part in a project which enabled them to have

their voices heard, spread positive messages to the community and help to improve their own

communities and beyond. Each group worked on a different topic, identifying a social issue they

felt passionately about, and were given a choice of artform through which to express their ideas –

including theatre, dance, photography, and music. As part of the project, we worked with local

experts to run specialised workshops, enabling young people to expand their knowledge of the

topics and develop a final performance and supporting materials to deliver their social action

message.

Nightingale Youth Theatre (ages 5-12)

Young people from Nightingale Youth Theatre chose to explore the topic of climate change as this

was a very prevalent issue at the time, with many of the group concerned about the Australian

bush fires. We worked with 15 regular participants across the term, all of whom displayed excellent

levels of focus and commitment to the project. The group were able to collaborate with local

resident and expert Les Moore, who held a special workshop, helping to deepen their knowledge of

the topic. They also visited the Nightingale Community Garden, which is managed by Les, and had a

guided tour with local resident David Stokes to learn more about how the garden is helping to

combat climate change on the estate.

For their final pieces, Nightingale split into two groups, with one group creating a photography

exhibition and the other group choosing to produce a role play. The groups incorporated their

newly gained knowledge of climate change into their pieces and designed a range of protest

placards which were used in the drama piece. The photography group learned a range of new skills

in focused workshops, before exploring the Community Garden and the Estate to create a

collection of photos which would inspire positive action. At the final sharing event, young people

shared a presentation of their photography exhibition, explaining their motivations for each photo,

as well as the short role play devised by the other group.

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Nightingale Youth Theatre visit the Community Garden with local resident David Stokes.

Young people present protest placards as part of final performance (credit Sean Pollock)

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Huddleston Youth Theatre (ages 18-25)

Young people in our Huddleston Youth Theatre chose to explore the topic of employability. This

topic is particularly relevant to the group; as an exclusively SEND group, all of them have faced

rejection or discrimination when seeking employment. We engaged with the participant s’ ‘dream

jobs’, interview techniques, and the barriers they faced when looking or applying for work as well

as potential discrimination they may experience whilst in employment or voluntary work.

We worked with 12 regular attendees across the term, with the group dividing themselves up into

three separate groups based on their confidence performing to a large audience, focus levels, and

dramatic experience and ability. This allowed each group to have a suitable and dedicated staff

member supporting them throughout the process. Each group worked through various methods of

creation, including still images and stimuli, scenario-based performance, comedy, choral work, and

public speaking. Alongside developing their performances, the group worked on a therapy-based

exercise called The Tree of Life which enabled them to identify their skills and knowledge and their

hopes and dreams.

A particular challenge with this group is that they typically do not respond well to change; this term

the group moved rehearsal space three times and a long-term member of the staff team left

suddenly which caused stress, upset and confusion amongst participants. Despite this, the group

adapted very well and were able to manage their emotions. Their devising and performance skills

have really developed this term, as well as their ability to work together as a team and compromise

with other participants. Each of the three groups performed very well at the final sharing.

Kingsmead Youngers Youth Theatre (ages 5-8)

Our Kingsmead Youngers Youth Theatre chose to explore the topic of bullying, as this is a topic that

many of the participants have experienced themselves, either as a victim or as a perpetrator. The

group explored different types of bullying, including online, social, verbal, physical and emotional.

We invited the Young Hackney Wellbeing Team to run an anti-bullying workshop which

encouraged young people to consider the qualities of a good friend. Using this knowledge, the

group created anti-bullying posters to promote kindness and friendship.

We had 20 regular attendees in the group this term. Splitting into four groups, the young people

devised role plays exploring the impact of bullying. The group worked very well together and

displayed more effective communication skills and better team working as a result of the topic.

They also created a whole group chant, using a physical theatre drum beat they had learnt at

school; the young people taught this to staff and it was then developed to fit in with the anti-

bullying theme. This worked very well and helped to improve whole group cohesion. Overall, there

was improved behaviour and conduct of the young people and excellent levels of focus,

engagement and commitment.

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Young Hackney’s Wellbeing Team deliver an anti-bullying workshop for young people

Young people from Kingsmead Youngers performing at the Competition Event (credit Sean Pollock)

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Kingsmead Olders Youth Theatre (ages 9-12)

Young people from Kingsmead Olders chose to explore the theme of status, using movement and

dance to express what status meant to them and identifying songs which they felt represented

status. The group are very passionate about dance and took inspiration from the popular social

media platform Tik Tok. We had 8 regular attendees across the project; at the start of term, they

had divided into two groups with one group developing a dance routine and the other creating a

devised drama piece but this changed throughout the process and resulted in all group members

working on the dance routine together.

Participants in this group display particularly challenging behaviour and there were a lot of

conflicts with members of staff and the newer members of the group, creating tensions within

sessions. Towards the end of the rehearsal process, the group became extremely self -destructive

and disengaged with the competition, despite having worked really hard on their dance piece

across the term. All members of this group have extremely low self-esteem and face outside factors

which cause them to react negatively towards change. As a result of these issues, only two group

members attended the competition to represent their group. We felt that this was really brave of

them and were pleased with the performance they gave in the end.

Wally Foster Youth Theatre (ages 12-25)

Young people from Wally Foster Youth Theatre chose to explore the topic of racism as this is an

issue that many participants have faced themselves or witnessed amongst their peer group. They

spent some time sharing these personal experiences of discrimination and how this made them

feel, before creating a role play made up of three key scenes to depict their experiences. The group

also chose to use photography to express their ideas. They took part in a photography workshop,

experimenting with skills such as lighting, angles and composition. As part of their final piece, they

took a series of striking black and white portrait photos, holding placards with anti-racism slogans.

One member of the group also wrote their own very poignant spoken word piece, which was

incorporated into their final piece, adding choral movement to punctuate and highlight key phrases

to the audience.

This term the group have really developed their skills and continued to make progress. They are

increasingly taking more responsibility for their work, with the workshop leader able to take a more

hands-off approach and gently guiding the work. As a result of this, the quality of the work is

improving each term and they are really beginning to work together as a young theatre company.

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Photos from the anti-racism protest exhibition created by Wally Foster Youth Theatre

Wally Foster Youth Theatre perform at the final competition event (credit Sean Pollock)

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Woodberry Down Youth Theatre (ages 6-12)

Young people from Woodberry Down chose to explore the topic of sexism. The group is all female

and staff had noticed that many of the girls lacked confidence and self-esteem, therefore they

identified an opportunity to help the girls to feel more empowered. Young people explored a range

of visual stimuli related to gender equality and inequality, looking at various topics such as the

differences between toys for boys and girls, employment rights, and stereotypes related to women

being caregivers. Participants worked in groups choosing one of the stimuli as inspiration to devise

their own role plays. In addition, young people all designed their own protest placards and devised

a whole group protest chant using these placards.

Young people displayed really good progression with their drama skills across this term and

delivered a very strong performance of their final pieces. Unfortunately, we will no longer be

working with this group due to lack of funding, which meant the young people were very

disappointed, but we were very proud of their work across the project and were really pleased with

the turnout at the competition event.

Forest Road Youngers Youth Theatre (ages 6-12)

Forest Road Youngers chose to explore the theme of ocean pollution. The group split into two and

worked on devising two parts of a performance which would work in harmony in the final sharing.

There is quite a varied age range within this group, so it was important for us to ensure both groups

were equally stimulated with age-appropriate artistic challenges. Using various dramatic

techniques such as physical theatre, song, choral speaking and still images, young people created a

cohesive and humorous performance which highlighted the truths about ocean pollution and what

we as humans can do to prevent further damage.

Alongside this, young people created art pieces out of used plastic bottles, depicting an ocean

scene with fish and sea creatures. This also gave us the opportunity to invite other young people

from the Young Hackney Hub to work with the group on these art activities; this was a great way of

engaging new young people and getting them to understand that our sessions are not purely about

creating drama performances and that there are other roles available such as director, writer, props,

costume and set design etc. This term we have seen a considerable amount of growth within this

group in terms of both drama skills and personal development.

Forest Road Olders Youth Theatre (ages 13-25)

Our Forest Road Olders group chose to explore the impacts of negative judgements. The group

aimed to create a piece that would make the audience think about inclusion, kindness and coming

together as a community. We struggled to maintain group numbers this term as many participants

were on work placements; despite this, we worked with 12 regular attendees across the term.

Sessions involved activities using mirroring and levels to explore how stories can be told through

non-verbal communication. Young people also created flash mobs and chants and explored how

they could use music to express their ideas.

In the final weeks leading up to the performance, we created a short piece where the young people

discussed how they felt when being judged; this was portrayed through film and physical theatre.

There was a range of technical elements implemented in the performance; costume, props and

music, which broadened participants’ creative knowledge. The addition of audience partic ipation

was really rewarding for participants and developed their performance skills, they also wrote

positive messages on postcards to give out to audience members.

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Art displays created by Forest Road Youngers in workshops with used plastic bottles

Young people from Forest Road Olders perform at the final competition event (credit Sean Pollock)

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Final Competition Event

The project culminated in a borough-wide competition event, with all of our Youth Theatre groups

coming together to share their projects at the Wally Foster Community Centre on Thursday 12 th

March. The groups presented their final performances, as well as displays of the visual arts

materials they had worked on throughout the project, to a panel of judges and an audience of 150.

This was a great turnout and created a supportive, warm atmosphere; the audience members were

mainly parents and carers, many of whom verbally expressed to the team how much their child had

enjoyed the project and how well they had performed. It was great to see so many families

engaging with the project.

There were prizes of £150, £100 and £50 to be awarded, which the winning groups could spend on

a group activity of their choice. The groups were scored on their creativity, teamworking and social

action message. Our panel were all members of the community and each had different areas of

expertise: Dr Melissa Butcher, the chair of Immediate Theatre’s Board of Trustees who also chaired

the panel; Sean Pollock, a local photographer specialising in portraits of people and places;

Shekeila Scarlett, Trustee and former participant of Immediate Theatre and Co-chair of Hackney

Young Futures Commission; Suzanne Gorman, Artistic Director of Maya Productions who also ran

and led our first ever EbYT in 1998; and Inez Coffey, Carmen Cummings and Gloria Dascent,

representatives from Theatre Exchange, Immediate Theatre’s programme for over 50s and the

Hackney Caribbean Elderly Organisation.

The judges were really impressed with the young people and the hard work they had put into their

projects was evident across all of the performances. Our photography judge Sean Pollock was very

impressed with the two groups who had submitted photography exhibitions – Nightingale and

Wally Foster Youth Theatres. This really pleased the young people, who had expressed a particular

interest in photography in their project application. The judges awarded the 3rd prize of £50 to

Woodberry Down Youth Theatre, 2nd prize of £100 to Huddleston Youth Theatre and the 1st prize of

£150 to Wally Foster Youth Theatre.

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Huddleston Youth Theatre receive 2nd prize at the competition event (credit Sean Pollock)

Wally Foster Youth Theatre receive 1st prize at the competition event (credit Sean Pollock)

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Project Aims & Outcomes

Support young people to explore social issues and injustices that they feel passionate about,

leading them to become more engaged in current affairs

In participant Goal Setting forms completed at the beginning of term, 80% of young people said

they wanted to learn about things they care about and 77% wanted to share their ideas. All groups

taking part in the project were engaged with current issues at the start of the term, and the

opportunity to choose their own topics meant that young people were able to explore issues they

truly cared about.

Through group discussion and creative practice, the groups explored their chosen themes – what it

was and how it manifested, how it affected their world, and what they could do to address the

issue. Within each group, participants split into smaller teams; this enabled young people to

explore the issues in more depth and engage with the various ways in which they can speak out

about the issues via creative mediums. Specialised workshops with Les Moore from Nightingale

Community Garden and Young Hackney’s Wellbeing Team enabled young people to learn more

about the issues from experts.

Young people were able to learn new skills and to engage with the ways in which artists and

activists get their message across to the world. This enabled them to feel confident in thei r ability

to express their own opinions on the issues in creative ways, which really showed in their final

pieces.

Since completing the project, young people have remained engaged in global issues and have

been vocal about the topics they wish to address in our sessions, particularly for the summer

programme which young people would like to be focused on mental health and wellbeing. Young

people’s work has also been shared on our social media platforms, contributing to wider

discussions around climate change on Earth Day in April and racism as part of the recent Black

Lives Matter movement. We shared the anti-racist photography exhibition and the piece of spoken

word written by one of the participants of Wally Foster Youth Theatre on Twitter and Instagram,

which received an extremely positive response; this provided a platform for young people to have

their voices heard and be part of the conversation in an extremely relevant global topic about

which they feel very passionate.

Enable young people to meet other young people from across Hackney, socialise and make friends

Our final competition event on the 12th March enabled all of our Youth Theatres to come together

in one space and share their projects. This was a really key element of the project for the young

people as they wanted to be able to meet up and socialise with other young people from across

Hackney, something they often do not have the chance to do. In participant self-evaluations carried

out at the beginning of the project, 86% of young people said they wanted to make friends from

their age group; young people told us they felt there were not enough opportunities to meet and

socialise with others outside of their schools.

This project enabled participants to mix with other young people in a safe environment, both at the

final event and in the weekly sessions where young people from different local schools attend.

Unfortunately, due to the lockdown measures imposed in March, we were unable to carry out end

of term evaluations with participants, so we are unable to say how many felt they did make friends

in the project.

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Develop young people’s existing artistic skills and support them to learn new skills

At the start of the process, young people were given a choice of various artforms to explore and

present as part of the final competition event, including drama, dance, photography, spoken word,

film and placard making. Some of these were entirely new to participants, allowing them to explore

a new creative skill. Young people then worked with one facilitator with knowledge of their chosen

artform throughout the course of the project to develop their understanding of the artform and

build on their skills in tailored workshops.

For young people who chose to use drama to express their ideas, sessions enabled them to

develop their existing drama skills in order to explore and generate new ideas for the final

performance. Photography was one artform in particular identified by young people in their

application as something they wanted to learn more about. They felt that everyone has the ability

to be a photography today by using their smartphones. We supported young people in sessions to

develop their photography skills using their phones, as well as learning how to use professional

cameras and identifying what makes an effective photograph.

Again, we were unable to complete end of term monitoring, so we do not have any data on how

many young people felt they had developed their artistic skills. However, staff observations show

that 46% of young people had improved technical skills and performance ability and another 46%

had sustained levels from the previous term.

Develop young people’s confidence and collaboration skills

From the offset, we placed the views and decisions of young people at the forefront of the

workshops. This enabled them to feel confident in having opinions on social issues and for the se

opinions to be heard. Collaboration is central to the workshops, with young people working side by

side throughout projects, supporting one another by giving praise and constructive criticism , and

sharing ideas and creating their pieces as a group. Young people also performed to an audience of

150 and a panel of judges in the competition event, which greatly increased their confidence and

pride in themselves.

We also ensure young people as individuals have confidence in themselves and their ability to

speak and be heard no matter what. This can be in the form of listening to them about their day at

school or something that happened outside of sessions, a 1-2-1 with a staff member if they are

worried about something or listening to their creative ideas during rehearsals.

While we were unable to complete self-evaluation forms with participants, staff observations

showed that 52% of young people improved and 38% sustained their teamworking and

communication skills from the previous term. 49% of young people also showed improved artistic

confidence and creative thinking and 44% sustained their abilities from the previous term.

AQA accreditation for at least 30 young people

We are currently processing accreditations for 50 young people.

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Huddleston Youth Theatre perform at the competition event (credit Sean Pollock)

Photographer & judge Sean Pollock shares feedback for young people (credit Lola Carter)

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Case Studies Case study 1 N is 24 and has been a participant for over six years. Her autism can cause her to be quite rude and abrupt with other participants and staff. She has always had an abundance of artistic abilities and confidence, but the inability to understand compromise, loss, or criticism of any kind. She often has issue with facilitators who are younger or close in age to her. This term N has been working across three of our EbYT groups, interacting with a mixture of other young people with SEND and young people without SEND, and has also been working with other charities to find employment. We believe the balance of these things has allowed her to mature and understand how to manage her emotions in challenging situations. This has enabled her to integrate into groups easier and build positive relationships with staff, listening to instructions even if they are younger than her. She understands how to compromise and accept the loss of a competition or prize which is a huge personal development. N has continually improved her drama skills and ability to positively engage with larger and smaller groups. Case study 2 J is 8 and joined our Kingsmead Youth Theatre in September 2018. When he first joined, we quickly identified him as having what appeared to be selective mutism; he barely spoke to any staff members and was therefore unable to communicate with us. He was extremely quiet, withdrawn and unable to participate fully in the drama activities. However, this term J was able to perform in front of 150 audience members at the social action event, delivering all of his lines whilst facing the audience. This is a huge achievement for J, who has really surprised staff with his swift progress. This has been a gradual progression as a result of a great deal of patience and compassion from staff, taking a gentle and slow approach to help J gradually build his confidence through praise and positive reinforcement. Case study 3 T is 9 and joined the Nightingale group as a new participant this term. During his first couple of sessions, he demonstrated some disruptive behaviour which concerned the staff team. He lacked focus and found it difficult to listen to staff instructions. However, as soon as we started the first photography workshop, his behaviour transformed. He had never used photography as an art from before, but immediately connected with it and quickly displayed a natural talent and flair for this art form. This noticeably kept him more engaged and focused throughout the rest of the project. He became one of the most hard-working members of the group, taking a great deal of pride in his photography presentation by memorising it and taking on board staff feedback. At the final sharing event, T was individually praised by one of the judges for his outstanding photographs.

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Project highlights

• The young people displayed a really high level of focus and commitment to their projects and everyone seemed to enjoy the process and exploring their topics in more detail.

• It was great to work closely with Les Moore and Nightingale Community Garden with our Nightingale Youth Theatre. He also provided fruit from the garden for our final event.

• The design elements came together really well, and we created really engaging and consistent branding, with young people having an active role in the decision-making.

• The overall quality of the final pieces was much higher than last year’s project, which highlights progression within our EbYT groups as a whole.

• We had good participation numbers across all groups throughout the term and a great turnout from both young people and families at the final event.

• The event had a really positive feel. It was great to see all of our youth theatres together in one space and have the opportunity to socialise and share their work with each other. We’re really pleased that this will be an annual event.

• The judges really engaged with the event and put a lot of thought into their decisions.

Young people celebrate winning 1st place at the competition event (credit Sean Pollock)

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Lessons learnt Length of the final competition event The performances at the final competition event went on for too long. This meant the audience and young people were getting bored and restless, which was unfair to the groups performing later. We discussed limiting the role plays to 5 minutes max. going forward and focusing more on arts and crafts activities in the sessions to make the exhibitions look fuller and include this more in the scoring. Venue for the event Wally Foster was a really good choice of venue; the young people really enjoyed being able to perform on a proper stage and it made the event feel big and important. It was great to be able to welcome so many audience members because of the size of the venue. We will continue to use this venue for future events. However, it was difficult to hear young people on stage due to the size of the room and volume of people in the room. The audience at the back of the room could not hear anything, which added to the boredom and restlessness. We are reluctant to use microphones in performances as we want young people to learn to project their voices, however we have discussed using two microphones that sit at the front of the stage to pick up the sound. The young people are battling a lot of noise from the chairs, babies and a generally creaky hall and the younger groups would not be able to project loud enough to be heard over these factors.

We also had issues with signing in and out of the building with both young people and audience members due to the amount of personal details required by the sign-in system at Wally Foster. This is something we need to work out in advance in future when using the venue for performances so that it does not cause any health and safety concerns on the day.

We also had a few other issues with the venue such as the door, toilets and the chairs and tables. There are common problems that arise between our team and the Wally Foster staff and this is something that needs to be worked out for future usage of the space. We have established a better communication system with the Wally Foster staff so hopefully in future this will be able to be resolved. Judging criteria We felt that the judging criteria should reflect the project as a whole more. It is difficult for them to judge the groups on their teamworking without having seen how they have worked together in the sessions across the term. We have discussed potentially having a statement from each group leader, sharing what they think their group have done well across the project, or allow more time before the event opens for the judges to talk to the young people about their projects. This would allow them to gauge how engaged they were with their topics. We are also planning to ask the judges for suggestions on this; both Melissa Butcher and Shekeila Scarlett have been present at the event for ‘Our Voices, Our Choices’ and ‘#itmakesme’ last year, so we hope they can share some ideas for improvement.

We would also like to be able to share feedback from the judges with the young people after the competition, so they know what they did well and what to work on for their next project or performance. Experts and specialised workshops We need to get in contact with experts and organisations much sooner as we struggled with getting a response. We were able to make use of our partnerships with Young Hackney and the Nightingale Community Garden, but it would be good to provide more of these experts in future.

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Staff Team Nadya Bettioui – Youth Drama Coordinator/Project Lead Georgia Gill – Event Producer/Marketing Designer Charmain Humphrey – Participation Manager Hannah Drummond – Workshop Leader/Facilitator Claudia Rebolledo – Workshop Leader/Facilitator Montell Pemberton – Peer Facilitator J’nai Toney – Peer Facilitator David Omordia – Facilitator Hannah Cassidy-Matthews – Placement Student from Goldsmiths With support from: Jo Carter – Artistic Director Gbenga Olopade – Training Coordinator Ada Onyekwelu – Volunteer Lola Carter – Photographer Pete Morland – Lighting “It seemed much more effective to have a smaller staff team with more duties, as opposed to last year where we had more staff with fewer roles” – Nadya Bettioui “The team worked well together, and the roles were clearly laid out so there was no confusion ” – Hannah Drummond “Georgia did an amazing job with all marketing, displays and managing the behind the scenes elements of the event!” – Nadya Bettioui “The team worked really hard to support the young people and everyone pulled together at the event to make sure everything went smoothly and support Nadya and I. Everyone stayed behind to help clear up at the end which made it a much quicker process” – Georgia Gill