There's magic in it

All people are freaks, or, if you want to put it another way, different. But we are also social beings reliant on others for survival. Adolescence highlights this painful dilemma. Sometimes conformity is just part of growing up, but sometimes it’s destructive.

Greenwich & Lewisham Young People’s Theatre (GLYPT) has 40 year’s experience of working with young people from vulnerable backgrounds. Recently we acknowledged that the majority of our work was reaching those that the mainstream had ‘spat out’: children in care, survivors of trauma or those with emotional behavioural difficulties. We also noticed that young people were finding a niche in our activities – “Drama is the only place I can escape my life.” In 2010 we embarked on a period of research which led to several partnerships with organisations from outside the sector, most notably with our local Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS).

In 2011 we received a grant from Help a Capital Child to run a pilot programme for vulnerable young people, with referrals from Greenwich CAMHS, Women’s Aid and school Special Educational Needs Co-ordinators (SENCOs). Using a new model – an artist working with an accredited therapist – we created an active space where young people who had experienced all sorts of difficulties could play together and celebrate each other’s differences. The team, including some extraordinary volunteers, designed a programme that had both boundaries and freedom; safety and the chance to take creative risks. At its core was the celebration of all things about each person and a refusal to accept any kind of discrimination. Theatre is not about conformity – in theatre it is the strange and vivid, the deafening or silent that makes an impact.

The pilot led to a new mental health and wellbeing programme: WHATEVER Makes You Happy. Our key aim is to improve wellbeing. As well as running programmes in partnership with local services, schools and arts organisations, we plan to conduct research exploring the components of theatre that seem to make a difference. Why does the use of mirroring enable someone with social anxiety to be a leader? How do the sound, movement and energy of a drama game create a community in ten minutes? We hope to get to the root of how theatre enables individuality and community to coexist so well, and create profound and lasting wellbeing.

And we go forward, less in the cynical (or teenage) meaning of the phrase “whatever”, but in the words of another great thinker and artist, Goethe: “Whatever you dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!”