Spotlight On… Live Theatre's Children & Young People’s Programme

Talking to Helen Green should be prescribed on the NHS to people who need some enthusiasm and joy in their world. Her passion for what her team and the theatre does is so palpable that it’s infectious. She explains that the Live Theatre’s work with young people has been running since Live Theatre senior associate Paul James set up the team around a quarter of a century ago, and the Live Tales programme around eight years.

“We've worked with thousands and thousands of schoolchildren in that time,” Helen explains. “And one of the things that is really important and vital about it is that it's all free. The Children and Young People’s programme is free to attend, the Live Tales workshops are free to attend, so you don’t have to have money to take part in this. There’s always certain barriers – like if you’ve got to travel to get here – but we’re trying our hardest to remove as many barriers as we possibly can.”

Asked to summarise what the programme is trying to achieve, Helen says: “Live Theatre is a new writing theatre, and so we only ever really produce plays that have never been seen before, and I think the work of the programme is to champion the fact that any child has the potential to be the most amazing creative writer / theatre-maker / storyteller if they want to be. It's to advocate for their creativity and imagination and to champion that and place real value in the role that children can have in teaching us about great storytelling.”

Helen goes on to outline the three main strands of the programme, each of which works to put into practice exactly that advocacy and encouragement of potential.

“We have our Youth Theatre, which I think is one of the largest youth theatres in the northeast, and maybe in England. It has 180 people aged from 10 all the way to 25. We have a base here and also in Sunderland. They meet every week during term time and the young people create their own pieces of theatre and then they're given full production values in the main theatre at Live to put on incredible shows and festivals.”

“Then the other strand that we have is a project that we call Live Tales, a programme that is mainly offered to schools and supports children's creativity and imagination in their writing. The national curriculum tends to focus on spelling and punctuation and grammar, and doesn't have a lot of space for children's ideas and imagination to be celebrated. So I suppose in response to that, Live Tales is NOT about spelling, punctuation or grammar in any way, shape or form, and it is about celebrating  the mad worlds that children can create and saying ‘yes’ to their ideas! That's something that we offer for Key Stage One and Key Stage Two children. They can either come down to us.at the theatre – we’ve got a dedicated space for writing to happen - or more recently, we've been going out and doing residencies in schools, working with them over a period of time.”

The final strand is taking place in conjunction with the team here at NE1, a new project called Story Inventors which takes the Live Tales model and adapts it to work with families.

“How can we work with families? How can mams and dads and carers - the adults in the family’s world - work with children in a similar way, so they can create mad stories together?” Helen enthuses. “It's really cool and one of the things that I just think is pure magic with all the work that we do in Live Tales is that we have this amazing crack team of volunteers, some of whom are volunteer illustrators. So all of these characters and these worlds that the children are describing – and I mean, they're bonkers! -  they're being illustrated at the same time. So the kids are coming up with all these stories and you’ve got these rather stressed-looking adults who are frantically drawing. It’s a really stressful 20 minutes while you're doing that drawing. but it is also a real moment of magic, because suddenly the children see their ideas drawn on a piece of paper and it shifts everything for them because it makes them realise that we're taking it seriously and that the stuff that they're creating is is really valuable. That is a totally gorgeous moment in the workshops”.

Helen adds that In recent years, the team have also hired a space at Sunderland Fire Station, funded by some money from the Virgin Money Foundation, to run a Live Tales project.

Quite a number of actors, comedians and theatre-makers have passed through the programme in the past. 

“Lauren Pattinson, who’s a local comedian, was part of the youth theatre," explains Helen. "We've got a lot of famous people who are massive advocates too – Robson Green is somebody who hugely champions us and is a real supporter of the work that we do. My Aunt Fanny is a comedy group that was formed as part of the youth theatre and now doing really, really well. They're amazing, they come back and work with young people. They always give back. Lots of people are really generous with their time.“

Helen has been in her role for around six years and clearly loves it – we asked what she enjoys most about the work her team does.

“The creative teams, the people that we work with, are fantastic, they are some of the best facilitators and the best creatives and really care about children and young people. And without doubt, every time we work with a child or a young person, even if it's just a two-hour workshop and we're never going to see these young people again - you see a change, you see something in them where they're perhaps just walking that little bit taller. Maybe just because they're outside of school - for so many young people, school isn't the easiest place for them to be. I think the work that we do obviously supports their creativity, but it also gives them a bit of joy! They get to just be kids and have a laugh and feel valued. So the people that we work with and the young people themselves - seeing the benefits that they're getting out of these projects is totally lush!”

Perhaps creativity and joy aren’t emphasised enough in the current education system, so the work that Live Theatre and other such organisations do couldn’t be more valuable right now. One thing that’s clear is that the Children & Young People's programme at Live Theatre – and practitioners like Helen and her team – really do bring a little magic into a lot of young lives.

Live Theatre is located on Broad Chare near Newcastle's Quayside. For more information about their Children & Young People's Programme visit www.live.org.uk/children-young-people.