Since the global COVID-19 pandemic many youth theatres have closed due to social restrictions. Youth theatre is considered a highly interactive activity, needing an in-person presence and live involvement. It involves physical, emotional and embodied practice to be most effective. And thus it, and other theatre activities, were among the first sectors to close across the world. Since stopping their practise young theatre makers have not had the chance to develop their skills collaboratively, and cultural youth workers in this sector have been out of work for months as employment is precarious and depends on having access to a group to happen. This project aims to offer theatre makers skills and materials to conduct their work online during times when they cannot meet (and so avoid closure, loss of earnings, and loss of creative interaction for young people). Digital Drama Workshops will create and distribute 30 two-hour drama sessions that can be carried out online. A further 10 two-hour sessions will be created for in-person socially distanced work. The project will create and upload 10 videos about collaborating online, and contextualising youth theatre in the youth work realm. Digital Drama Workshops brings together 4 of Europe's most proactive youth theatre organisations to create these materials. Crooked House (Ireland) will lead the project, assisted by Rogaland (Norway), BiondekBuhne (Austria) and Pirineus Creatius (Spain). Together they will develop practices that will be tested in youth theatres in their home countries before being freely shared online, and available to download in a free Resource Book called Digital Drama Workshops. Each workshop plan will be for a two-hour workshop. The 30 workshops can be arranged in 5 units to comprise a 6-workshop programme for established groups of young people in a youth theatre. They can also be arranged to provide a 30-week programme, building upon each other and developing a range of skills over time. The project will also create Multiplier Events in Austria and Ireland, where at symposia and seminars, the material will be disseminated and promoted. Even if COVID disappears, the resource will still be useful for youth theatres to involve: • rurally isolated young people; • those who cannot afford to travel to our centres; • people with social anxieties reluctant to be in groups; • those who are incapacitated or who can't leave home/hospital; • and people from communities who stigmatise participation in theatre-making. Digital Drama Workshops is underpinned by 4 key principles: 1. Collaboration and creativity. The partners believe that all people have the right to be creative and to practice their creativity together. The project highlights the role collaboration serves in human growth and development. The online activities therefore will enhance this feature and not become a space in which individuals merely do 'individual;' things passively while being together. The workshop plans and resource material focuses on participants being engaged collaboratively, working actively to create meaning together using an online platform to do so. 2. Being social – moving towards community. The project acknowledges that social isolation is a major problem across Europe, and that many young people cannot take part in group creative activity due to distance, travel restrictions, mobility issues, health, detention, and a host of other reasons. Therefore, the workshop plans encourage participants to work in groups or in pairs, and to focus their attention onto the social more so than onto the personal. In addition, the project appeals to young people from anywhere with wifi to take part in a group activity without having to travel. 3. Open access. Free. Available to all. Culture, and access to it, is a human right. The materials in this project make access to theatre-making easier. And therefore they are free and readily available. 4. Participation and not consumption. The project spotlights 'learning by doing' or embodied learning in its materials. The risk with online drama is that it becomes passive (participants watch videos, listen to speeches, and read material). This project focuses on active participation, moving, writing, sharing, engaging, and collaborating in so far as it possible to do in a digital arena. The goal is to help young people create meaning rather than consume opinion.
This project aimed to follow one of the guidelines of the “Renewed Framework for European Cooperation in the Youth Field” (2010-2018), which stated that social inclusion initiatives ought to “realise the full potential of youth work” to combat every form of discrimination and promote equal opportunities for all. The project also aimed to support access to creative activity for young people in line with the EU’s Creativity and Culture policy. The project's objectives were: 1- To create 10 short films explaining the importance of youth theatre for youth development; how to set up a youth theatre; facilitation guidelines; the principles underpinning good youth theatre-making practice; and how to prepare for online and socially-distanced drama work. 2- To produce a comprehensive handbook/manual that described how to deliver full drama workshops online. The aim was to have 30 online workshops described and 10 socially-distanced ones. 3- To test the drama workshops with local partners (youth theatres in each region). 4- To disseminate the project results across Europe and draw users to an easily accessible centralized online platform called Digital Drama Workshops.
The partners are all theatre-makers with extensive experience of collaborating with cultural youth projects in the field of non-formal education and social inclusion. They recognized a need in the sector for accessible cultural youth work methods that were designed specifically for use in pandemic situations or when it was not possible to work in-person with young people. In October 2020, we created an online survey and shared it with our network of cultural youth workers in Europe. As of 28 October, there had been over 100 responses from cultural youth workers in 15 countries within the EU and from 10 neighboring countries. 87% said they had closed their youth theaters due to COVID; 79% said they were unsure how to use digital drama; 100% said they'd love resources to help them; and 89% said that they would use these resources regardless of COVID for combating social isolation. All of them gave suggestions as to what kind of material should be in the resources.