Regional Hub: Aberdeen

Ring in the New Year with YTAS at our first Regional Hub in Aberdeen, featuring workshops, networking and lively discussions.

Our Regional Hubs are designed to upskill artists, share practice, support emerging artists, spark ideas for future partnerships, and create stronger working relationships within regions. So, practitioners in and around Aberdeen, be sure to mark your calendars and join us at His Majesty’s Theatre from Friday 10 to Saturday 11 January 2025.

Practitioners may choose to join for all workshop and networking events across both days, for all workshops and networking on only one of the days, or just for the networking parts (which are free). This Regional Hub has been programmed with the support of the team from Aberdeen Performing Arts.

We’ll have Shaper/Caper first on the Friday morning, getting us warmed up to how we can use movement as the building blocks for creating work with young people and communities.

Then on Friday afternoon, we’ll be joining Ali MacLaurin to think about our productions from a visual perspective and create worlds with impact on a youth theatre budget.

After an optional evening social on Friday, we’ll kick off our Saturday with a YTAS favourite… everyone loves a Games Exchange! Bring your favourite warm-up game and come away with a list of new activities learned from others.

The exchange continues into the afternoon, when Ink Asher Hemp will invite artists to explore their own practice, share experiences, and swap ideas to make creative spaces more accessible for neurodiverse young people.

Regional Hubs are open to all levels of experience and can be accessed by anyone who uses art and creativity in their work with young people. We will lead with a focus on theatre and performance, but the activities explored can be utilised in many youth work or youth arts settings. So, whether you’re a volunteer, a theatre manager, a drama teacher or anything in between, you’re sure to come away with new knowledge and contacts from your region and beyond.

Agenda

Day One: Friday 10 January 2025

10am: Arrivals and Mingling over teas and coffees
10.15am: Intro from YTAS Learn about Membership Support and upcoming opportunities in 2025.
10.30am-10.50am: Warm up and goal setting with APA and YTAS

11am – 1pm: Let’s Get Moving

How can you use movement as the building blocks for creating work with young people and communities?

Join Artists from Dundee’s Shaper/Caper in a two-hour workshop to get your blood pumping and to inspire you in your own practice. The workshop will take inspiration from Shaper/Caper’s recent production, Small Town Boys. Take away practical movement activities you can use in your own youth theatres and communities.

This session is led by Shaper/Caper, a multi-award-winning dance company and registered charity, based in Dundee, Scotland. Set up in 2015, they are all about work in communities. Shaper/Caper have worked with over 59k children and young people over the last 7.5 years. They focus on creating excellent art that connects with real people, ensuring that as many people as possible, despite their socio-economic backgrounds, race, and/or gender, can access high-quality arts for free.

1pm-2pm: Lunch
2pm-4pm: Designing Worlds… on a budget!

You have your cast, you have your ideas, script, concept… you even know how you want to direct the performance. Now what? In this workshop, Ali MacLaurin will work with you to think about your productions from a visual perspective. You will work with simple design tools to help elevate your work and to give the young artists you work with the opportunity to create worlds with impact… all while working from a youth theatre budget! No practical design skills are required for this workshop, but come ready to get stuck in.

This session is led by Ali MacLaurin, who trained in theatre design in Edinburgh and Croydon before spending the 1980s in London designing shows for fringe theatres such as Battersea Arts Centre, Hull Truck and the Albany Empire, Deptford. Since then she has designed, devised, made, facilitated and taught all over the UK. In 2004, Ali returned to Scotland to set up the Costume Design and Construction degree at Queen Margaret University before moving on to a part-time teaching post at Fife College so she could continue her freelance career. Since then, she has designed a wide variety of work from the Fringe First winning show, ‘The Tailor of Inverness’ for Dogstar Theatre, to three operas for under-fives for Scottish Opera, work at the Traverse Theatre, and a unique interactive voice installation for Winchester Science Centre.

4.15pm: Finish
6pm: Optional Evening Social

Day Two: Saturday 11 January 2025

11am: Arrivals and Mingling over teas and coffees

11.30am – 12.45pm: Games Exchange (Networking event)

Got drama games? Every practitioner’s bread and butter! Running regular workshops with young people involves keeping things exciting and keeping them engaged. But when you are starting out it can be easy to get stuck delivering the same ones over and over again. In this networking event, practitioners will spend the time experiencing games from colleagues and leading the group through your favourites. You should come prepared to share and participate. You might come away with a list of new activities, a refresh on the games you’ve forgotten or some twists on the classics.

This session is led by Emma Barr (she/her), YTAS’ Sector Development Manager. Emma has worked across the UK and Canada as a director and educator, specialising in making theatre for and with young people. With a background in applied theatre, she is particularly interested in how youth theatre can contribute to a young person’s sense of identity and creates a cultural community.

12.45pm – 1.30pm: Lunch
1.30pm-3.30pm: Supporting Neurodiversity in your Youth Theatre

This is a practical workshop which will focus on developing tools, rehearsing exercises and swapping ideas to help better help leaders to make any creative spaces more accessible for neurodiverse young people.

This section is led by Ink Asher-Hemp (they/them), a self-taught queer, disabled, creator, facilitator, activist, theatre (trouble) maker. Until recently, they held the role of Arts Practitioner: Climate Crisis at Eden Court Highlands where they directed community performances, developed staff training, and facilitated a Queer Youth Arts Collective. A core focus of their work is ensuring that accessibility is creatively integrated, practical, honest, and politically articulate.

In Ink’s safe workshop environment, leaders and artists will explore their own practice, share experiences and update their toolkits. Drawing from their own experience as an artist and facilitator, Ink will ensure that all participants leave this session with confidence in their ability to support young people with diverse needs in their home youth theatre, classrooms and clubs.

3.30pm – 4pm: Creative Evaluation with YTAS

Feed back about the Regional Hub and reflect on your own experience while exploring methods of creative evaluation that you could use in your own workshops.

Who is it for?

The event is for everyone who uses drama and theatre in their work with young people. This could include youth theatre leaders, drama teachers, youth workers, community learning professionals, theatre practitioners, students, and emerging young leaders (16+).

We are particularly keen to welcome practitioners who would like to develop their work within Aberdeen/Aberdeenshire and/or those who are looking to widen their networks within this region.

Ticketing info

Practitioners attending our Aberdeen Hub may choose to join for workshop and networking events for individual days or across both days. The choice is yours!

The ticket options are as follows…

YTAS Members: £10 per day or £15 for the full event
Non-Members: £30 per day or £50 for the full event
Saturday Networking only: FREE
Next Generation Participants: FREE

When you go through to book, you’ll have the option to choose which day you’d like, or to book for the full weekend.

Networking events are free, but please still book a space if you only want to come to these. This is so we can plan activities in advance.

We’ve tried to keep costs as low as possible to enable more practitioners to attend, so we won’t be providing catering during the event, other than refreshments.

Next Generation

For those of you who are aged 16-24 and interested in starting a career as a youth theatre artist, YTAS invites you to attend the Regional Hub for free. This is a great chance to get to know local networks and employers and learn more about how you can become a member of YTAS’ ongoing Next Generation training programme. This opportunity is funded by Young Start, Youth Scotland and the Scottish Children’s Lottery.

Bursaries

Thanks to funding from Creative Scotland, the Gannochy Trust, the Macrobert Trust, the Foyle Foundation, the People’s Postcode Trust, the Stafford Trust, the Hugh Fraser Foundation and the JTH Charitable Trust, we are delighted to be able to offer bursary places to attend our Regional Hubs.

Bursaries are available to any YTAS Member, who requires financial support in order to attend a Regional Hub event, and will cover any fees and/or expenses associated with the training. You are welcome to submit an application for multiple sessions at a time.

YTAS Membership

Our membership is made up of independent youth theatres, arts organisations with their own youth theatre provision, drama teachers, volunteer-run charities, freelance practitioners of youth theatre arts, and many more. If you’re interested in joining a national network of like-minded people, be sure to read more on our membership page.

Commitment to Safe Spaces

YTAS strives to create and hold events and spaces where everyone feels welcome and the safety of others is valued. This commitment applies to all our online and in-person services, activities, and communication channels.

We have a zero-tolerance policy towards any behaviour which creates feelings of unease, discomfort, offence, embarrassment, humiliation, or intimidation, whether intentional or not. This includes but is not limited to; transphobia, homo or biphobia, racism, ableism, sexism, or class discrimination.

For more information about YTAS’ commitments to safety and best practice, read our full statement here.

Access Requirements

If you have any access requirements of which you’d like us to be aware, please let us know by completing this Access form and returning it to us via info@ytas.org.uk.

Youth Theatre Arts Scotland