Creative Commons: Working together to support youth theatre development Erasmus Project

Project Title

Creative Commons: Working together to support youth theatre development

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for youth

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy) ; Creativity and culture

Project Summary

Creative Commons: Working together to support youth theatre development
Context:
‘Creative Commons’ provided the National Association for Youth Drama (now Youth Theatre Ireland) and Youth Theatre Arts Scotland (YTAS) with a unique opportunity to share best practice within the youth theatre sector and to strategically build new and innovative resources in the areas of Young Critics practice and Young Leader mentorship and skill development.
Throughout the Creative Commons project, Youth Theatre Ireland and YTAS shared expertise, learning and collaborated on activities.
Youth Theatre Ireland and YTAS pooled experiences and network contacts to enable the creation of: a Young Leaders Mentorship digital publication: a Leadership Skills ‘Resource Suite’ for Young Leaders hosted online; and a multi-media web-resource exploring best practice in Young Critics Programmes.
This partnership helped Youth Theatre Ireland and YTAS to promote high quality youth arts work and support the development of innovative resources reflective of digital culture.

Objectives:
the main objectives for the project were:
*To exchange skills, knowledge and expertise
* To increase knowledge of the youth theatre sector in each partner country and develop working relationships between staff
* To work together to create new, innovative resources to support two specific areas of practice of interest in both countries: Young Leaders resources & Young Critics resources
* To advance best practice in these two specific areas, improving staff expertise and knowledge as well as that of the sector in general
*To build a best practice model for international partnership between youth theatre development organisations that could be promoted at a European level.

Results and impact
Throughout the project Youth Theatre Ireland and YTAS have engaged with over 1700 young people, youth theatre practitioners, artists, teachers, and youth arts workers. The partnership has also benefited a further 34,000 indirectly to date and this figure will grow as the tools and resources created during the project will now be hosted on the partners websites and will continue to be available to all after the completion of the project.
Partners applied youth drama approaches as the key methodology across the project. Youth drama practice engages young people as active participants, by using group or ensemble approaches and encourages the development of the whole person. Project facilitators also drew on other non-formal teaching and learning methods that respond to the needs of participants.
These results were achieved by Youth Theatre Ireland and YTAS through a series of transnational project meetings, resource development activities and participative consultations, a young critics youth exchange, multi-media resource creation activities and multiplier training events.

Longer term benefits
As a result of the project, Youth Theatre Ireland and YTAS have increased knowledge, confidence and ability within the youth theatre sector around youth leadership and mentoring activity and the creation of quality young critics projects on a regional/national level. Through their dissemination plan and multiplier events, Youth Theatre Ireland and YTAS have opened up their youth arts practice to cross­-sectorial cooperation and spread quality young critics and young leaders practice to the formal and non-formal education sectors, the youth work, youth arts and cultural sectors and regional arts development agencies.
This project also enabled Youth Theatre Ireland and YTAS to lay the groundwork for the establishment of a larger network of Youth Theatre organisations, which will include Youth Theatre Ireland, YTAS and Youth Theatre groups from Norway, Belgium, Germany and Northern Ireland.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 101848,94 Eur

Project Coordinator

National Association for Youth Drama & Country: IE

Project Partners

• Youth Theatre Arts Scotland