Hello, I’m Anthony! I recently joined Youth Theatre Arts Scotland as their Membership Support Coordinator.
I’m a big drama nerd. I love scripts, shows, directing, telly – the lot!
During the pandemic, I decided to finally move to Scotland, which has been a personal goal of mine ever since visiting the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with a youth theatre when I was 18. It was a mind-blowing experience and one that would influence my understanding, appreciation and approaches of theatre-making in the years to come.
For the last few years, I’ve also worked at Arts Council England in a variety of roles. My time there provided me an understanding of how organisations should be run, good governance, general processes and the wonderful, not-at-all-stressful world of fundraising and grant applications! So I’ve had the benefit of being involved with creating work as well as seeing ‘the other side’ of the wall, gaining an understanding of operations and all the grey stuff that has to be taken into account when running a creative business smoothly.
Now I’m at YTAS. And they’ve given me the keys to the Membership Support Portal. I’ve had a look around and yeah, it’s brilliant!
The Portal (or ‘Supportal’ as we’ve fondly been naming it in the team) is an online space where a wide of variety of guides and resources have been collated to help you with developing your youth theatre.
Here, you’ll find helpful guides to help with areas that can often be quite tricky to navigate, ranging from safeguarding and insurance to monitoring and evaluation and how you can effectively plan your operational activity. It’s for any of our members regardless of where you’re ‘at’ – whether you’re just starting out, a sole trader, a small charity or an established, leading theatre currently working on your youth programme – everyone can benefit!
We’ve worked to make the information as clear and digestible as possible for you to work though. But it’s still quite a lot of information! With that in mind, I’m more than happy to guide members through this space and help you objectively prioritise what resources would be most helpful for your youth theatre at this time.
The portal falls under our new initiative – the Membership Development Programme – and as part of that, I’m also happy to arrange consultation meetings with you to discuss and talk through areas that might be a challenge. I’ll consider what areas of the Portal could help as well as other opportunities YTAS or our partners might be running.
If you’d like to know more, I’m running an Information Session later this month on Wednesday 27 September at 12.30pm – it would be great to see you there.
So that’s me and the Membership Support Portal! If you can’t make the session, I’m happy to chat to members and non-members whenever over a brew about all things youth theatre.
We’re on hand to help
Did you know that as well as our new Membership Support Coordinator and Portal, the YTAS team responds to around 100 requests each year for bespoke advice, support, or collaboration? These come from a wide variety of YTAS members, non-member drama groups, and youth arts and education stakeholders. Common queries include…
- Help setting up a new youth theatre group or project to address identified local issues
- Help promoting their events, training, opportunities, or resources
- Help creating new company policies or improving their business practices
- Specific queries related to concerns around funding, child protection, risk assessment, or Equalities, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI)
- Requests for input into sector development research or consultation
- Requests for assistance with international contacts or funding.
If you need help with these types of queries, or anything else, contact info@ytas.org.uk and we’ll make sure the right person gets back to you as soon as possible.
