Bringing youth theatre together

Last week we did something that hasn't happened properly for many, many years.

We brought together more than 150 artists, facilitators, trustees, young people and other people who work in Youth Theatre, to talk about their work and the future of the sector.

Youth Theatre Together was a direct response to the Youth Theatre Census, which showed how important, widespread and vibrant theatre with young people is - but also how under-resourced and fragile.

We were determined not to run a conference in which delegates came to listen to a few 'important' people speak and then go home. Instead we made a space in which everyone brought their own expertise to wide-ranging, hopeful and creative conversations.

We invited the people who normally get asked to *speak* at conferences to become 'Listeners' - listening to the conversations and noting them in Google docs that everyone could access and comment on. It was quite something to see senior leaders at the National Theatre and the Arts Council (to name but two big organisations) sitting sensitively in rooms full of youth theatre artists, leaders, trustees and members - diligently writing down every word they said on their laptops.

We tried to have something for everyone: movement, lyric-writing and devising workshops, zine-making by Comics Youth, space for quiet conversation, game exchanges, opportunity sharing and meals together. We paid five young people to be Artists in Residence, offering artistic reflections at the start and end of the event, and attending every workshop and discussion.

People who run youth theatres give an extraordinary amount of love and care to the young people they work with, so it was only right we did the same for them. We made sure everyone could attend by paying for hotels, travel, food and - when it got too hot in the dance room - ice lollies. It meant that we had some of the biggest youth theatres and the smallest, all in the same room, talking as equals.

We took real care over equity, wellbeing and access - brilliantly led by Maisy Gordon and the team from 20 Stories High.

By the end we had collectively sketched out six priorities for a new national development agency for youth theatre, something that we originally recommended in the Census Report. We hope to have the new organisation operational within a year.

But in many ways we had already started to achieve some of those priorities just by being together. In particular, the idea that the people who make space for more than 100,000 young people to express themselves in almost every single borough, town and village in England should be better looked after, more connected and celebrated for their work.