Ignition Project: training youth drama and dance facilitators
Context
This project is about building the capacity of the cultural youth work sector in Europe. Cultural youth workers are people who work with young people using professional artistic practice (in music, theatre, visual art, dance, film, digital media, design, creative writing, etc) to achieve traditional youth work objectives. They have learned how to use the artistic process to help young people express themselves, critique the world around them, and positively change the community in which they live. Cultural youth workers are usually professional artists. There are many avenues in Europe for the training of artists. However, there is very little focused training in applying artistic skills in youth work settings.
In the partner countries, where youth theatre practice occurs (if it happens at all), it focuses mainly on the training of young actors. Several professional theatres in Greece, Turkey and Spain offer programmes for teenagers that are about learning acting skills, developing stage skills, and performing. In Ireland there are hundreds of stage schools that do the same thing.
Aims
- Support artists to work in youth work
This project hopes to help provide resources for artists in two disciplines (theatre and dance) to become competent youth drama and youth dance facilitators. We selected only these two disciplines because the partner organisations are skilled in them; and also, because youth work organisations do not need any equipment or special resources in order to apply dance or drama to their youth work programmes.
Our project aims to show trained or experienced actors and dancers how to apply their training to develop life skills, resilience, and active citizenship abilities in young people. They will learn, for example, how to help youth use and apply information; how to develop social skills and extrospection; how to express their views and opinions about social and political issues using drama and dance; how to collaborate with others; how to gain confidence, handle anxiety, and improve their capacity to manage stress. These are some of the aims of a good drama or dance programme.
We use the artistic disciplines not only to create art with young people, but to implement quality youth work aims and principles. It takes a lot of training to help actors and dancers to become competent in this field, and there are no programmes in Europe that we know of which do it with a specific focus on youth work.
- Support the development of youth theatre and youth dance
A broader aim of the project is to support the growth and resourcing of youth theatre and dance in Europe. These sectors are strong in Ireland and in Britain having experienced over 70 years of development. In Greece, Spain and Turkey they are burgeoning and in need of investment. The research into this field has shown that theatre and dance, if delivered appropriately, inclusively and competently, develops young people’s social skills, sense of identity, and engagement with their communities in ways that no other learning activity can match (Art for Arts’ Sake OECD Report, 2023; ESRI / Arts Council of Ireland Report, 2016; Generating Happiness, Hussey 2019). We want to promote this activity through the development of youth and dance theatres in the partner organisations.
- Improve the employability of young artists
A specific aim of the project is to significantly add to the professional skills of young artists who can use this training to enhance their employability. Employment of dance and theatre artists across Europe is sporadic and insecure. With this qualification (Youth Pass Certificate) they can apply to run local authority and municipal youth theatres and dance projects in Ireland, Turkey and Spain; they can apply to work in schools in Greece and Turkey. In Ireland Crooked House has experience of training young artists who have become employed in the cultural sector as a result of their training. Since 2023, our volunteers have gained jobs facilitating youth theatre and dance across the country, as well as employment in the wider cultural and youth work sector. See Annex 1 for details.
- Support youth work organisations to incorporate theatre and dance practice into their work with young people
We know the extraordinary value and impact on development that good theatre and dance can have on young people. However, many youth work providers do not realise that theatre and dance can have this impact on the young people in their projects. Those who do often do not know how to go about implementing theatre or dance programmes in their organisations. Our project aims to develop resources that not only artists can use but that youth workers can use to (a) understand the value of youth and dance as agents of positive growth and development in young people from all walks of society; and (b) implement projects with artists to achieve youth work goals. The resources will be in the form of videos and booklets that document, explore and describe workshops, projects, impacts and techniques for delivering good youth theatre and dance programmes.
These will then be used as resources in universities where the arts form part of the curriculum for training youth and community workers (like Maynooth University), or where young people are trained in theatre and dance disciplines. In the latter they will support the expansion of the curriculum to include applied theatre and applied dance – that is, the use of the art forms to achieve social, community and political aims with groups of non-actors and non-dancers.
Project Partners
The project brings together 4 experienced organisations in the cultural field who already work with young people and who have developed methods, theories and practice of using dance and drama in youth work. Between them they run youth theatres, young dance ensembles, creative group work projects, and youth and community work training. They are:
- Crooked House Theatre Company (Ireland) is the beneficiary organisation and applicant. https://www.crookedhouse.ie/
- FOCO Europa (Spain). https://www.focoeuropa.com/
- Kinitiras (Greece). https://www.kinitiras.com/?lang=en
- Süleyman Demirel Üniversitesi, (Türkiye). https://gsf.sdu.edu.tr/sahne
The lead partner, Crooked House, provides training to Maynooth University and other institutions in using drama as a tool for community and youth work. For 20 years its Key Action 1 Erasmus+ projects have shared this experience with youth workers and young people across its wide network of partner organisations.
FOCO is based in A Guarda, Spain where they make theatre projects with young people and community groups in order to build the capacity of their region, support young people to live and work there, and develop cross-border creative initiatives between Portugal and Spain. FOCO’s two directors were European Voluntary Scheme volunteers with Crooked House from 2019 to 2020 before they set up FOCO in Spain. Now they are regular partners of Crooked House.
Kinitiras is a long-term collaborator with both Crooked House and FOCO. They work on long-term projects suing dance with young people, women, and the elderly. The aim of their projects is to support the development of resilience in both young and old, providing creative resources for their community to improve their mental health and physical well-being through dance.
SDU is a new partner in our consortium for KA2 projects. However, the university has been involved with three KA1 projects that we organised in the past three years. Their staff are artists with whom the other partners have worked previously.
Content
The project does not seek to provide merely artistic training in drama and dance to young people. This is plentiful training of this kind in hundreds of universities and third level institutions across Europe already. The project instead focuses on providing facilitation training to dancers and theatre makers who would like to work in youth work settings.
- Online Resource Manuals
We will produce three online manuals of resources for non-specialists. These will contain practice, instructions, examples and support materials for youth work organisations and youth workers who would like to introduce theatre/drama and dance into their practice.
The manuals will be:
- Principles and Practice of Drama Facilitation
- Principles and Practice of Dance Facilitation
- Youth Voice: facilitating young people’s expression in public forums using theatre and dance
While the focus of the material will on be on supporting practitioners in youth work settings, the material can also be applied to working with community groups (people with intellectual and physical disabilities, women’s groups, International Protection Applicants, the elderly, and so on) because many of the ideas and methods are the same across a range of settings.
The material will be drawn from the decades of professional practice built up by the partner organisations.
The manuals on Principles and Practice will contain the elements of a training programme that providers can implement as it is, adapt, or edit to meet local needs and contexts.
The manual on Youth Voice will show and discuss examples of good practice in using theatre and dance as methods of assisting young people to promote their concerns and ideas in public. There will be strategies for making work that can be presented to politicians, leaders and decision makers. Some practices, such as making site specific performances, verbatim theatre, theatre of the oppressed and documentary theatre will be introduced the reader. These are all useful forms of performance that can effectively harness and channel young people’s voices into public expression and display.
They will be available in Spanish, English, Greek and Turkish.
- Online Videos
12 videos will be published online and be freely accessible, of between 10- and 20-minutes duration. Each partner will create 3 videos. The videos will illustrate some of the principles of youth dance and drama in practice; explain some of the principles and theories with images, footage of workshops, and examples; and give an insight to the regional and cultural variations experienced by the 4 partners who come from culturally diverse settings. The videos are designed for youth workers who embark on the practice of drama or dance facilitation. Subtitles will be in Spanish, Galician, English, Greek and Turkish.
- Four Training Programmes
We will design and deliver a training course of 100 hours (deliverable in flexible formats) for theatre-makers and dancers in facilitation youth work using their discipline. The course will implement the programme description in the manuals. This will be a way of testing the written material, which can be changed or amended through feedback from the course participants.
Each of the 4 partners will deliver a training course in their own country. They will be responsible for recruiting and selecting the participants, finding the venue, resourcing it with appropriate staff or teachers/tutors, and scheduling the training.
There will be at least 10 participants aged over 18 on each course. As each partner will run one course in the final year of the project, there will be a minimum of 40 cultural youth workers trained in youth drama or youth dance facilitation between the partners.
The programmes will use the manuals as guidance and teaching tools to run the programmes.
Sign up to our newsletter to find out when the course will be open for applications and how to apply. https://crookedhouse.us21.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=7aaaeffc2cf62feb7c7fd10de&id=a416c57207
- Four Visits of Specialist Artists to each partner
There will be 4 mobility of youth workers (artists). Each mobility will bring a youth worker (trainer) from a partner to work with one other partner during the course of the project. This youth worker will help train the participates of the training programme, and explore the methods used by the host organisation. The mobility will be 3 days for each youth worker. The youth worker will be an expert in their field be able to teach advanced practice in youth drama or youth dance facilitation. They will be staff of the partner organisations.
The trainer from FOCO, Spain will go to Kinitiras, Greece
The trainer from Kinitiras, Greece will go to Crooked House, Ireland
The trainer from Crooked House, Ireland will go to SDU, Türkiye
The trainer from SDU, Türkiye will go to FOCO, Spain.
The programme, and the dates, for each of the visits will be worked out and developed between the partners. However, they will occur during the last phase of the project when there are participants in each organisation training in drama and dance facilitation.
- Supervised Practice
As part of the training programme, each participant will be supported to undertake a ‘placement’ with a youth group in their locality or community. The youth group could be a school, a youth project, a once-off summer camp, an informal group of young people, or any grouping of young people aged between 13 and 30. Each of the partner organisations already has several youth projects established or within their network which can be used to support this activity. The participants of the training programme will plan and deliver at least 6 workshop sessions with this group. They may be supported by the professional facilitator, teacher, youth worker or expert who already runs the group. Three of these sessions will be observed by a professional youth drama or dance facilitator who is competent in training facilitators and who is able to give supportive and guiding feedback to help improve the practice of learners.
This visit is called a Placement Supervision Visit. We are using the model developed for the training of adult educators, youth workers, and community workers in Ireland by Maynooth University.
- Online Clinics
The project plans that there will be 10 online video sessions of 90 minutes duration. They will bring together all of the trainee facilitators along with hosts. They will take the form of clinics where participants can share problems they are having in drama/dance facilitation, issues that arise for them in the placements, propose solutions to the problems raised, share resources and tips that they have encountered, and ultimately grow a community of practitioners that will sustain and support each other over the coming years. The sessions will be once per month. The work of the sessions will be complimented by a project WhatsApp group for the 40 trainees and their facilitators.
In this way we hope to encourage the participants to establish a network that will continue after the project ends. They can share employment opportunities, training and other resources.
Complimentary Mobility Activity
The beneficiary organisation, which is an accredited organisation for youth, will run a mobility of youth workers project in 2027 to which are invited the 40 participants of the drama and dance facilitation courses. This will happen before the courses commence. The aim of the mobility, a professional development activity, will be to introduce the youth workers to creative youth work in practice. This way, the participants will get to know each other before they embark on the 100 hours of training at home.
This mobility will not be funded from the Key Action 2 programme but will use a separate funding source.
Target groups
The project is targeted at artists over 18 who have trained in theatre or dance and who now wish to find a way to apply their skills in youth work settings. It will train them in youth drama and youth dance facilitation, support them in applying their training to placement settings, and enhance their employability as cultural youth workers.
This project is also aimed at youth work organisation who wish to use theatre and dance in their practice with young people as tools for the development of emotional and physical well bring, and as methods of enhancing youth work aims and processes.
To that end we will develop online recourses that can be accessed by youth work organisations internationally.
The project ultimately targets young people aged 13 to 30 in 4 countries. It hopes to increase the availability in Ireland, Turkey, Greece and Spain of accessible, inclusive, and competently delivered youth dance and youth theatre programmes to young people that promote their personal, social and political growth as citizens.
We will do this by each training 10 artists who will be ready to establish their own cultural youth work practice after the project ends. In Ireland, there is already a well serviced and developed youth theatre sector, of which the beneficiary partner (Crooked House) is a senior and respected leader. The Irish project, therefore, will focus a little more on the training of youth dance facilitators and actors who use physical theatre skills to work with young people for youth work purposes.
Duration
The project will last for 36 months. It began 31st December 2025 and will conclude on 30th December 2028.