During the Easter holidays we visited Essex Boys and Girls Clubs Theatre for all project, a performing arts project organised for young people aged 11 to 18 in the Braintree area.
The project ran over five days, giving young people the opportunity to create, script, produce and perform a play about community safety and how they feel about their local area. As well as learning theatre skills, the young people also learnt social skills, team work, creativity and how to improve and build their confidence.
On the day we attended, we watched five young people turn a personal experience about supporting an elderly person, into a play about prejudice and judgement. They had good discussions about their community, how they could build confidence and change perceptions. How-to one-person clothes may look cool, to another they may look frightening or intimidating and these thoughts form our opinions.
These discussions formed the basis of the performance and shaped the scripts and characters the young people created.
At the end of the five days, the young people performed their play in front of their parents and an invited audience and received a great response. One of the parents in the audience said “’Both my children have loved this experience and have grown in confidence, they will be back 100%. So very proud of them for their performance and what they have achieved.’
We also asked the young people to let us know what they had enjoyed most at the end of the week and the responses we got were: “I really enjoyed the writing sessions”, “I loved performing” and “Please can we do this again, it’s been really fun.”
Essex Boys and Girls Clubs are hoping that this project will grow into a weekly session at Braintree, mirroring the success they have had in Uttlesford. They are also looking to develop further in Maldon and Silver End.
