On youth theatre and On Burnley

I am feeling torn. I think it's because six months or so after becoming Artistic Director full time for Burnley Youth Theatre the reality of the day to day has kicked in.  And because I'm in a bad mood anyway.  Why? Because this year has been tough and fraught for all kinds of reasons and you know, I'm not made of stone.  And because life it hard some times.  Life is just plain tricky.

Don't be fooled. I'm not down on the job - it's a great job.  What could be better than working with young people and enabling them to take their first full steps on the road to becoming life long theatre lovers, or facilitating their creativity, being part of an activity that improves young people's overall attainment and so on? Believe me I am not fed up of being the Artistic Director - I haven't even started yet. I'm just certain that it's a bigger job than I thought.  Just certain that there are some obstacles that need to be overcome.

Firstly, let it be said I am blessed with an amazing team. Lovely people who work above and beyond the call of duty. They all, everyone, work above and beyond their alloted hours.  They contribute ideas, thoughts, insights, passion, energy and above all enthusiasm into making the place work.  That isn't what's at issue.

Secondly, let me tell you we are supported by ACE, BBC and LCC and we're very grateful for that.

Thirdly, let me tell you we are in the National Portfolio and we are naturally pleased about that too. We are very excited about what this might mean for us...

But this is a period of change for the arts, and I know that how we've done things since I've been at the helm is very different to how we're going to have to do them in the future to survive - and, dare I say it, grow?
And this is the root cause of my general bad mood.

Well, sort of.

Two things are really exercising me a lot.  And here they are:

One is that sometimes - and I really do not have a chip on my shoulder about this - sometimes I sense that people glaze over when they hear the word 'youth' in our title - as if, whilst there is an acknowledgement of the work's value, it's not like 'professional' theatre, or it's not like, you know, real artists who are beavering away, you know it's just a bunch of young people; as though we are in the National Portfolio to make the numbers up. And I am talking about people out of the arts as well as people in the arts.  WE are not - definitely NOT - just about young people having fun, we are not just a diversion (although these things are important).  We are about enabling young people to particpate in high quality arts activity, an absolutely vital foundation for ensuring that in the future there are young people who want to participate as audience, as artists and that their enthusiasm for creating art is channelled AND that they are given the opportunity to learn. We are about extending our offer to every corner, class and youth club across the region. What we offer is something that is uniquely focused on young people - it's not a sideline.  It's not something that is competing for space in a busy theatre building (although our building is very busy!) - it is a new theatre space that prioritises the work of young people.  Young people in Burnley, and beyond.  Young people in East Lancashire, and if our ambitions are fulfilled young people from across Lancashire and beyond.  We are not about subsuming all other youth theatre activity either, but about saying, 'Look - we have something unique here - a place for young people to come and work with us in partnership and BE prioritised.'  Burnley Youth Theatre is a purpose built space for young people.  And also let me say that youth theatre is not just a stepping stone for professionals to cut their teeth - but an entity that prioritises the emergence of young people as theatre practitioners, as theatre creators and theatre makers, that nurtures young people's hopes and ambitions in the arts - and the point is that the workers' role is to facilitate and prioritise that work.

And Two - The other thing that is exercising me is the fact that dozens of assumptions are made when you say the word Burnley.  Over many years of working here I have grown to love Burnley and its people, a population emphatically not apologetic about where they live, let me tell you.  A place emphatically on the up... don't believe me?  Come and look.

Burnley Youth Theatre
So, I have asked myself, 'What's in a name?'  I know that many of the people attached to the organisation and with good reason, are very much committed to maintaining and sustaining the strong identity attached to our name... but ... if we aspire to being a youth theatre for young people around the county or across the North West do we need to be named by our location?  Yes? Or no?  If we are charged by the arts council in building the youth theatre as a live venue for touring theatre and as a venue for other youth theatres to deliver work - is Burnley Youth Theatre the right name?  Is it inviting or is it off putting?  I do know that when people do bother to come and take a look at the youth theatre building they are very impressed by it.  Sometimes they look slightly aghast and say, "Is this a youth theatre?" as if such a building is completely outside of their experience of what a youth theatre should be like, as if we've only the right to exist in a hut somewhere instead of a purpose built and state of the art theatre, and sometimes they just can't quite believe that the building, a beautiful cedar clad place in a clearing, in a forest, is actually a youth theatre.  For young people, yes.  For young people to be prioritised, yes.  A place that focuses on young people and their emergence as young actors...

Not sure what the purpose of this blog was now... just a rift on Burnley... and Youth... and Theatre... and just a steer on how ambitious we are... Okay?  Sorry, there's that crossness  creeping in again. We're great?  Alright?

TRAPPED - AUDITIONS - Tuesday @ 1st November, 2011

Bring your little brothers and little sisters!  Bring your grandchildren and children - this is a new piece for children in school years 2,3,4,5 and 6 - 5:30pm - 6:30pm at BYT...   Give us a bell if you need to know more 01282 427767

Trapped - a new play for our Junior Children - auditions TUESDAY

On Tuesday at 5.00pm we have an audition for a new play TRAPPED.  This is a play about a young boy trapped inside a computer game. There's loads of characters for children in year 2,3,4,5 and 6. Come along!  See you there. 

People, we are a Building. People, we are an organisation. People, we are a youth theatre.

Making not Watching and the art of generosity. A cautionary tale...

We want to develop a youth theatre where all young people have the opportunity to create theatre as well as the opportunity to watch it.  As part of our successful NPO bid we have been asked to develop BYT as a receiving theatre.  This means that as well as offering young people the opportunity to participate, we are also looking for young people (and their families) to become an audience.  It has occurred to me - slowly as I am actually quite dim some times - that these are not necessarily the same thing. Young people who want to perform are not necessarily the same as young people who want to watch theatre...

Some years ago - well back in the beginning of time when I had escaped teaching and was living the life of the artist starving in the garret and actually having a good laugh getting reviews in The Independent,

 'Comic duo, Say So, sweating profusely under the lights,...'

if that counts -  I began to realise that as funny as we were (well, as funny as Carmen Walton, my comedy partner was) we were not going to be the next French and Saunders because all of the people who came to our shows (with the honourable exception of the poor bloke we dragged off Newton Street into the Frog and Bucket - imagine his startled face as we began our 'hilarious' routine) harboured the desire to be who we were, and to make their own work. All of them were, like ourselves, interested in what other people were doing, and occasionally even bought their wares but all of them, like ourselves, were actually more interested in making our own work.  We sold 500 books and thought we were someone.  We were someone - just not quite who we imagined ourselves to be.  We were on radio one with Mark and Lard.  We were regulars on local radio, finding new and inventive ways to steal our BBC passes as we left... I had 20 at one point. We sat in the green room with The Two Fat Ladies (and YES you could tell the difference.)  We laughed when we saw the soft shoes of a famous news reader... and in the end we just came to an end, in the way of all things.

We also shamed ourselves on a number of occasions during performances - we were bad for each other in that sense.  I famously fell over in Mid Pennines offices - I was out of control! I regularly corpsed (a problem that plagues me to this day) and on at least one occasion I regret being less than generous watching a poet who was using an orange in her set to symbolise a planet whilst wearing ski boots - this seemed inextricably hilarious at the time and we were barking with laughter and had to be removed from the room. We knew we were out of order, and we behaved badly.  What goes around comes around.

This was in the days before You Tube.  This was when you had to go out to hear what was going on in the world, and where the audience was largely tolerant because soon enough they would be up there delivering their own work.

It is a very different landscape now but I still have this sneaking suspicion that the urge to create your own work is at least equal to the urge to watch other people's. I wonder how often any of us really take time to watch and consider the work of those who are around us?  Yes, I visit the theatre regularly, and yes I read books, but which predominates - watching or making?  Perhaps it is different for different people? I don’t know the answers to these questions, I am merely posing them.  How do I encourage our young people to come and see work here, even if it is not quite to their taste?

At the youth theatre, we are developing a policy of positively encouraging the young people to watch other work. This is underpinned by the belief that you do not necessarily develop your theatre skills in the isolation of the rehearsal room.  Our notions of what constitutes theatre - what it is and what it can be - is shaped by what we see as well as what we experience.   Burnley is NOT a cultural oasis but many theatre companies don't necessarily seek us out as a venue even though we are the perfect size to house new and interesting work, and even though we are working towards doing just that. We want to offer our young people the opportunity to see work that might otherwise go unseen, to challenge what they understand as theatre and encourage them to take risks with their own work.  Nothing amazing was ever produced in a comfort zone. This does not just mean watching live theatre - both within our own space and on trips to other buildings - this term we have hosted Contact Theatre, M6 Theatre, and in a couple of weeks, we’ll be showing Red Riding Hood by Horse and Bamboo but directing young people to clips on You Tube or other websites where work is uploaded and demands attention and why we will be going to the Edinburgh festival again too.  Yes, sometimes work may be strange and unsettling, or perhaps not fully realised but to make theatre is to engage with a process of developing the best way of saying what needs to be said even if it falls short of what was imagined.

It is something else too.  We feel it as a deep and profound responsibility that we are charged with developing young artists - young people who are discerning about theatre, who are able to articulate what makes something good or bad, and who strive to make their own work original and challenging.  And equally, and no less important that they understand that they share that journey with many other artists and individuals some of whom have different talents to themselves, and who come from very different place or who strive for different meanings, and different ways of telling.  We are absolutely committed to the development of generosity.  If someone is wearing ski boots, and uses an orange as a prop it's okay to gently question the purpose of this, and suggest there might be a different way of working.

Ultimately, we feel that we have an immense role to support the young people who come to the youth theatre - the 450 who rock up week after week - to become fully engaging, thoughtful, passionate human beings.  Because in the end, whether you are making or watching theatre (or any of the arts) you are engaged in social action, political or non-political and that has a considerable consequence both now and in the future.  It is not easy.  Young people need to be convinced by the need to see other work - and this is a journey we are beginning to take.  We would welcome any suggestions about how we engage young people in this process.  I can’t make them come to see the work here - but I passionately want them to.

ps if you want a copy of 'Something Piggy and Unappealing' I still have a few hundred in the cellar.

WHO SAYS WE CAN’T GET 500 LIKES ON OUR FACEBOOK PAGE IN A FORTNIGHT?

The Power of Social Networking

I’ve been puzzling a while about Social networking.  So, firstly – I’ll explain where we are, and then my thoughts on why we’re not quite where I want us to be…and how we might get there.  In the last month or so, after it stalled, I’ve been working really hard to encourage people to like our Facebook page… I’ve managed to persuade very nearly 200 people in that time to like the page.  Well, I want to get to 500 likes in a Fortnight.  Is it possible?  What can you do to help?

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Burnley-Youth-Theatre/172630009436137


Read on, Macduff. 

WHERE WE ARE NOW...

Social networking…

We know that social networking, and digital content are crucial to our success and our future development.

We have leapt forward exponentially as an organisation and are now active on many social networking sites, and are becoming more savvy about how to use these platforms can enhance the experience of the young people within the organisation, and how people can find out more about us and stay involved – in the conversation, in shaping the future, in having their say about what we’re doing now, and what we might do in the future.   

We can be found on Twitter @BurnleyYT – and if you’re on Twitter you can sign in and follow this blog easily enough.  We’re on Facebook – like us http://www.facebook.com/pages/Burnley-Youth-Theatre/172630009436137

or follow us on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/user/YouthTheatreBurnley?feature=mhee

Or go and take a look at our photos on Flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/56959443@N03/

If you know or have any ideas about the best way to develop social networking and the best ways of contacting you, let us know.  We’re all ears. 

Social Network Archive…

We are working our way through uploading our archive.  This is a difficult job!  Burnley Youth Theatre came into being in 1973 – that’s almost 40 years of photos, posters, films, press releases and so on and so forth.  But bit-by-bit, more of our archive goes up.  More recent, digital stuff is easier to share.  But a lot of photos have been scanned and are ready to go – but all of this is done in my spare time, pretty much so given that I’m quite busy this is sometimes the thing that gets squeezed out.   If you’ve got any photographs you want to share, or any memories, please go to our Facebook page and share this with us…

Connecting other groups…

Ollie Briggs (who is fab and who I connected with on Twitter) is working with us to develop an Internet tool so that we can have an online conversation with other groups about the content of pieces and maybe in the future an online festival of work!   This will be purpose built and will give a forum to extend the conversation of in this case, a devising process.  The site will be limited to those involved at the moment (groups from Bury and Darwen are working with us on this) so that it’s a closed conversation.   This is a really exciting development, and I think has untold potential within the youth theatre as a whole, and in developing us as a hub of youth theatre practice. If you’d like to take part in this conversation let us know… In the meantime, we’re pleased to hear from all of our friends and chatting to them about possibilities… get in touch…

Digital Content…

We are ambitious about developing content.  This year, in Edinburgh, our young people returned enthused by the possibilities of projection and we will be using projection within our Christmas show for the first time this year.  This is a particularly exciting development – and we’re pleased to be working with the genius that is Anthony Briggs (no relation to Ollie, although being called Briggs clearly helps!) to support it happening.  

We know that film, projection, and digital stuff is easy to generate, and we’re brave enough to share rehearsals and raw content on our You Tube.  There’s some very edited material there, but also improvisations from the Rep Company, and footage from our recent trip to Shakespeare’s Globe…

Today at a fundraising event we were using camera, flip camera and a hd video camera... And this is a regular thing for us...

WHERE I WANT US TO BE (and what you can do about it)

So, here’s what I really want to talk about.  We are open minded about possibilities through content and through sharing our ideas, thoughts, and in trying to advertise what is happening at the youth theatre at any given time.   But I am acutely conscious that we are not making full use of the networks open to us.   And it has taken me a really long time to work out why…

People don’t always use their social networking pages for very much at all.  Why should they? They use them to connect with their buddies, to check up on family – as a means of chatting to school friends (and sometimes arguing) or whatever, as a means of belonging to a particular social group.  My experience this year has suggested that people generally don’t see their social network as more than a single collection of people. Their people. I think, and I could be wrong, that for a lot of people – and particularly young people, social networking is about reaching out and belonging.  It’s not about the network (s) in and of itself.  It’s not about the possibility of that network (or indeed the networks of each of their 130 friends.) 

Without trying to sound like some young and funky thing, anyone who knows me knows that I am a massive fan of social networking tools, and an equally massive fan of gadgets. I was among the first wave of iPhone users (still the best design in my view), and am, and have always been, interested in the power of the network. Networks can change the world.  Long before social networking pages on the Net, campaigns operated a ‘phone tree’ to generate a quick call to action.  Each person on the list might ring an additional two people, and they might ring two and then 100 people would be standing in a demonstration stopping something terrible happening… that’s how social networks worked then and that’s when they worked effectively. And that’s the principle I am interested in looking at now.

Networks are everything; the means by which we extend, expand and grow – how we connect to others and how they connect to us.  Long before the social networking tool was created, networks existed.  Networks are made of people or places that are tied together by one (or a number) of ‘interdependencies’ (Wiki, accessed 16^th October 2011) – and each of us has many: family, friends, school, interests, work, beliefs, or knowledge, for example.

Without trying to sound exploitative, I make use of my Facebook network (I have 2, a work and a personal one).  75 of my Facebook friends like BYT’s Facebook page. This is about a 5^th of my friends, and they do it because I ask them to.  I am convinced of the value of them knowing about what we are doing EVEN if they live miles away and are never likely to come to the youth theatre. Why?  Because people will then know about what we are doing, and about who we are and maybe reconsider youth theatre.

An average Facebook user has 130 friends – if all the young people, ex-participants, workers, volunteers and interested others who currently 'like' us and that are already connected to us asked a 5^th of their friends to like our Facebook page 9,984 (based on 384 currently liking the page) would immediately like us.   This means that almost 10,000 people would know about the professional shows that we have on at BYT, for example or learn about projects or access other information about us.  Why is this important?  Even if no one ever comes to the show, they see details of what we do and our profile is immediately raised.  So, why not ask your friends to like out page?  And then ask them again?  Offer them a link.  Make it easy for people to support us in this way.  Explain why it is important to you.  Explain why it is important to us.  The more people who know about us, connect with us, communicate with us, the better argument we can make to our supporters that we are what we say we are – a vibrant youth theatre serving a wide community.   And the more likely we are to be able to explain what we do to funding bodies.

And this is another thing.  If a 5^th of people like the Facebook page – that still leaves 104 (on average) that don’t.   What should we do about them?  Well, once a week maybe, you could share a story from BYT on your newsfeed.  If you did this, based on the average number of Facebook friends, an additional 40,144 people would see stories about us.  Can you see why it matters?  40,000 people hear about us, see that we’re a vibrant, busy organisation… and just think if they shared it – well you do the maths!   And if you simply see this as advertising exercise – it’s colossally powerful and saves us huge amounts of money.  If we printed 40,000 leaflets this would cost £500 for each set.  If stories were shared as described every week we would actually be benefitting from about £26,000 a year of free advertising!  It’s amazing!

This would be more than just extraordinary advertising for us.   This would be an extraordinary raising of our profile.  This would mean that people would find out about us who might never have known about us.  It means that we can really start being what we are charged with – a hub of youth theatre activity, a small venue catering for small and medium sized touring shows, a really high profile arts company with an effective socially networking process.

This is just one thought about social networking.  I have many.  Just one way of looking at it…what do you think?  I'm not suggesting this is it's only use either...

We are keen to know your thoughts.  Whoever you are, wherever you are.  I sometimes think the social network thing is all smoke and mirrors, and I’d be better off buying Karen Barnes a mega-phone and sending her down town on a Saturday to tell people what we’re up to. (To be fair, she doesn’t actually need the mega-phone…)

Do social networking sites work?

You tell me.  Better still – show me.  Who says we can’t get to 500 likes on our Facebook page in a fortnight?

I’ll save some of them...

I don’t know whether anyone else feels like this but the second young people are in the full glare of the media for inexplicable acts of violence, I start to feel my liberal heart beat a bit faster.  I like to think I know young people and that, on the balance of probability, they wouldn’t – generally – do anything so terrible as loot, burn and destroy everything in their sight.  Would they?

Yes.  They would.  They have.

I begin to calculate my defence of these young people.  I prepare what I’m going to say that will contextualize their behaviour, at least.  I struggle with this –everything clogging up the words in my throat before they have fully formed. 

I have spent a career - a life choice I have been happy to make – working with young people, many of them disaffected. The truth is, I have chosen to work with young people because I passionately believe in investing time and effort in the next generation.  Because it’s worth it.  Because they are the future.  My work has paid me back a thousand fold in job satisfaction and in not just feeling but in evidenced certainty that the work done does make a tangible, real difference.   I have seen young people go from angry to engaged, from downhearted to upbeat.  I have seen a little light switched on.  Not always, but often, engaging in arts projects of one kind or another has given young people an opportunity to shine., to feel heard, to feel like someone somewhere cares about what they might want to say.

But here – the riots - was something different.  Here was something akin to lawlessness, a group of young people running amok as if life had not meaning at all.  As if, the police don’t matter, or the law and order is nothing, as if politician and community leaders are dust and as if being caught or not being caught was utterly irrelevant.  What did it mean?  How could I read it?  Could I justify it sociologically or some other way? How could I defend the indefensible?

It was at that point , I suppose, that the raw human reaction took over.  It was a terribly uncomfortable place to be – outraged of Rossendale momentarily and then just as certain that young people – even these young people, need people still to believe that they are worth trying to save.  I found myself hiding from the social media too, even abandoning my Facebook page after coming unstuck when some accused me of ‘unilateral’ views because I kept banging on about society and context and the fact that young people don’t operate in a vacuum.  What are they supposed to do when MPs steal?  When journalists can’t be trusted, when those in authority telling them to behave better can’t behave themselves?  When the entire society is built on endless consumption, the pointless acquisition of things?  

“Condemn the act,” I kept saying, “Don’t condemn the young people.”  And yet on it went.  Many people I know, love and care about – even some in my own family wanted to flog, or string up young people.  The irony of the violence of the reaction was not lost on me.  I was dis-comforted by my own sense of outrage and that my friends and colleagues were calling for these young people’s heads.

And therein lies the problem.  It’s not binary.  Beyond the acts of violence it is not simply a matter of right and wrong.  Young people are complex – like anyone.  And context is everything.

Against this, at Burnley Youth Theatre, we work with a range of young people who are dedicated, interested and completely committed to delivering amazing work that represents a different picture.  You could suggest that the young people we are working with are a completely different cohort– middle class, engaged, supported by parents and with present fathers – and of course, you would be wrong.  Our young people are entirely representative of young people everywhere – they are a cross section of society.  Some have little.  Some have a lot. Some live with grandparents and some in children’s homes.  Some have experienced violence and some struggle with basic literacy. Some are likely to go to Oxbridge.  Some are young carers and some are young people with a criminal record.  Some have special needs and some do not.  Some are wheel chair users, and some come to us without a decent meal inside them.  Some have parents with grave difficulties of one kind or another.  Others are the antithesis of this – they have some or all of the privileges that life offers.  

And another point that’s worth making.  Not all of our young people are perfect.  They some times behave badly.  They some times make mistakes.  But we don’t give up on them. 

 The point?  It would be very easy to get carried away and make all sorts of knee jerk responses that punished – as should be the case – the act, but abandons the young person in the process.  If we want young people to be engaged, then we have to invest in them.  We have to develop a means of engaging them fully in the world; a difficult proposition when funds are being cut but no investment in young people is not an option.  And investment is not just about money.

To finish, an apocryphal story:

A man is standing on the beach.  All around his feet are starfish, hundreds and hundreds of starfish that will die if they are not in the sea.  He leans down, picks up a starfish and throws it back into the sea.  Each new wave brings more starfish to the shore.  And each time he just carries on, leaning down, picking up starfish and throwing them back.

A passerby walks towards him and asks,   “What are you doing?”

“I’m picking up the starfish, and throwing them back.”  He says.

The passerby shrugs, says, “That’s ridiculous.  You’ll never throw them all back.  You’ll never save them all.”

“No,” the man says, “No.  But I’ll save some of them.”