NEW YEAR, NEW PROJECTS

2020 is off to a busy start here at Immediate Theatre, with lots of preparations taking place in the office before our projects start back up.

We’re also very excited to begin a new project, with support from the Young Londoners Fund.

Interactions is a film and drama programme for young people who have been excluded, or are at risk of exclusion, from school.
Immediate Theatre has been engaging with excluded young people in Hackney for almost 20 years – our original Interactions programme ran from 2000 to 2012, when its funding was unfortunately cut. But thanks to the Mayor of London, we are back up and running for 2020!

Interactions will work with young people in Hackney, aged 13-19 in pupil referral units. The project is aimed at young people who are:

excluded/at risk of exclusion;
not high academic achievers,
statistically more likely to become involved in criminal activity if no intervention is available to them.
We want to fill the huge gap in support for this group by engaging them in positive, creative activities which help to give them a sense of belonging. Many young people who are excluded can become isolated and have to form new relationships as they move from school to school and beyond; our work will enable them to form positive relationships and explore alternative paths.

The programme is designed to support participants to develop a sense of themselves and their future. Using drama and filmmaking to develop confidence, communication and self-knowledge, the workshops will help the young people to identify their assets and what they can do, make them aware of other skills and attributes valued by employers, and support them to continue in education or find employment.

Through 6-week blocks of weekly workshops, we will explore: identity, how they see and present themselves, their strengths and ambitions, understanding emotions and developing empathy. The workshops will draw on participants’ own experiences, rather than school learning and we will work with them to create short films and dramas about their experiences, enabling them to tell their own stories in a constructive way.

The first block of sessions begins in January at Inspire in Dalston, and will have a social action theme, looking at the topic of STATUS. We will continue these workshops throughout the year at various other alternative education providers across the borough of Hackney.

From the 27th of February our weekly after-school sessions will begin and will run through school holidays as well in order to provide sustained support for this cohort of young people. All of these sessions are FREE and will be initially based in Dalston.

For more information on the programme, contact Charmain on 07525 892 953.