Cooperation partnerships in youth (KA220-YOU)
Project Description
Name: IGNITION: Training Resources for Drama and Dance Facilitators in
Youth Work
Project Reference: 2025-1-IE01-KA220-YOU-000352984
Context
This project is about building the capacity of the cultural youth work
sector in Europe. Cultural youth workers are people who work with young
people using professional artistic practice (in music, theatre, visual art,
dance, film, digital media, design, creative writing, etc) to achieve
traditional youth work objectives. They have learned how to use the artistic
process to help young people express themselves, critique the world
around them, and positively change the community in which they live.
Cultural youth workers are usually professional artists. There are many
avenues in Europe for the training of artists. However, there is very little
focused training in applying artistic skills in youth work settings.
In the partner countries, where youth theatre practice occurs (if it happens
at all), it focuses mainly on the training of young actors. Several
professional theatres in Greece, Turkey and Spain offer programmes for
teenagers that are about learning acting skills, developing stage skills, and
performing. In Ireland there are hundreds of stage schools that do the same
thing.
Aims
1. Support artists to work in youth work
This project hopes to help provide resources for artists in two
disciplines (theatre and dance) to become competent youth drama and
youth dance facilitators. We selected only these two disciplines because
the partner organisations are skilled in them; and also, because youth work
organisations do not need any equipment or special resources in order to
apply dance or drama to their youth work programmes.
Our project aims to show trained or experienced actors and dancers how to
apply their training to develop life skills, resilience, and active citizenship
abilities in young people. They will learn, for example, how to help youth
use and apply information; how to develop social skills and extrospection;
how to express their views and opinions about social and political issues
using drama and dance; how to collaborate with others; how to gain
confidence, handle anxiety, and improve their capacity to manage stress.
These are some of the aims of a good drama or dance programme.
We use the artistic disciplines not only to create art with young people, but
to implement quality youth work aims and principles. It takes a lot of
training to help actors and dancers to become competent in this field, and
there are no programmes in Europe that we know of which do it with a
specific focus on youth work.
2. Support the development of youth theatre and youth dance
A broader aim of the project is to support the growth and resourcing of
youth theatre and dance in Europe. These sectors are strong in Ireland
and in Britain having experienced over 70 years of development. In Greece,
Spain and Turkey they are burgeoning and in need of investment. The
research into this field has shown that theatre and dance, if delivered
appropriately, inclusively and competently, develops young people’s social
skills, sense of identity, and engagement with their communities in ways
that no other learning activity can match (Art for Arts’ Sake OECD Report,
2023; ESRI / Arts Council of Ireland Report, 2016; Generating Happiness,
Hussey 2019). We want to promote this activity through the development of
youth and dance theatres in the partner organisations.
3. Improve the employability of young artists
A specific aim of the project is to significantly add to the professional
skills of young artists who can use this training to enhance their
employability. Employment of dance and theatre artists across Europe is
sporadic and insecure. With this qualification (Youth Pass Certificate) they
can apply to run local authority and municipal youth theatres and dance
projects in Ireland, Turkey and Spain; they can apply to work in schools in
Greece and Turkey. In Ireland Crooked House has experience of training
young artists who have become employed in the cultural sector as a result
of their training. Since 2023, our volunteers have gained jobs facilitating
youth theatre and dance across the country, as well as employment in the
wider cultural and youth work sector. See Annex 1 for details.
4. Support youth work organisations to incorporate theatre and
dance practice into their work with young people
We know the extraordinary value and impact on development that good
theatre and dance can have on young people. See Appendix 2. However,
many youth work providers do not realise that theatre and dance can have
this impact on the young people in their projects. Those who do often do
not know how to go about implementing theatre or dance programmes in
their organisations. Our project aims to develop resources that not only
artists can use but that youth workers can use to (a) understand the value
of youth and dance as agents of positive growth and development in young
people from all walks of society; and (b) implement projects with artists to
achieve youth work goals. The resources will be in the form of videos and
booklets that document, explore and describe workshops, projects, impacts
and techniques for delivering good youth theatre and dance programmes.
These will then be used as resources in universities (like Maynooth
University) where the arts form part of the curriculum for training youth and
community workers, or where young people are trained in theatre and
dance disciplines. In the latter they will support the expansion of the
curriculum to include applied theatre and applied dance – that is, the use of
the art forms to achieve social, community and political aims with groups of
non-actors and non-dancers.
Project Partners
The project brings together 4 experienced organisations in the cultural field
who already work with young people and who have developed methods,
theories and practice of using dance and drama in youth work. They run
youth theatres, young dance ensembles, creative group work projects, and
youth and community work training. They are:
Crooked House Theatre Company (Ireland) is the beneficiary
organisation and applicant. [Link]
FOCO Europa (Spain). [Link]
Kinitiras (Greece). [Link]
Süleyman Demirel Üniversitesi, (Türkiye). [Link]
The lead partner, Crooked House, providers training to Maynooth University
and other institutions in using drama as a tool for community and youth
work. For 20 years its KA 1 Erasmus+ projects have shared this experience
with youth workers and young people across its wide network of partner
organisations.
FOCO is based in A Guarda, Spain where they make theatre projects with
young people and community groups in order to build the capacity of their
region, support young people to live and work there, and develop cross-
border creative initiatives between Portugal and Spain. FOCO’s two
directors were European Voluntary Scheme volunteers with Crooked House
from 2019 to 2020 before they set up FOCO in Spain. Now they are regular
partners of Crooked House.
Kinitiras is a long-term collaborator with both Crooked House and FOCO.
They work on long-term projects suing dance with young people, women,
and the elderly. The aim of their projects is to support the development of
resilience in both young and old, providing creative resources for their
community to improve their mental health and physical well-being through
dance.
SDU is a new partner in our consortium for KA2 projects. However, the
university has been involved with three KA1 projects that we organised in
the past three years. Their staff are artists with whom the other partners
have worked previously.
Content
The project does not seek to provide merely artistic training in drama and
dance to young people. This is plentiful in hundreds of universities and third
level institutions across Europe already. The project instead focuses on
providing facilitation training to dancers and theatre makers who would like
to work in youth work settings.
1. Online Resource Manuals
We aim to produce three online manuals of resources for non-specialists.
These will contain practice, instructions, examples and support materials
for youth work organisations and youth workers who would like to introduce
theatre/drama and dance into their practice.
The manuals will be:
Principles and Practice of Drama Facilitation
Principles and Practice of Dance Facilitation
Youth Voice: facilitating young people’s expression in public forums
using theatre and dance
While the focus of the material will on be on supporting practitioners in
youth work settings, the material can also be applied to working with
community groups (people with intellectual and physical disabilities,
women’s groups, International Protection Applicants, the elderly, and so on)
because many of the ideas and methods are the same across a range of
settings.
The material will be drawn from the decades of professional practice built
up by the partner organisations.
The manuals on Principles and Practice will contain the elements of a
training programme that providers can implement as it is, adapt, or edit to
meet local needs and contexts.
The manual on Youth Voice will show and discuss examples of good practice
in using theatre and dance as methods of assisting young people to
promote their concerns and ideas in public. There will be strategies for
making work that can be presented to politicians, leaders and decision
makers. Some practices, such as making site specific performances,
verbatim theatre, theatre of the oppressed and documentary theatre will be
introduced the reader. These are all useful forms of performance that can
effectively harness and channel young people’s voices into public
expression and display.
They will be available in Spanish, English, Greek and Turkish.
2. Online Videos
12 videos published online and freely accessible, of between 10- and 20-
minutes duration. Each partner creates 3 videos. The videos will illustrate
some of the principles of youth dance and drama in practice; explain some
of the principles and theories with images, footage of workshops, and
examples; and five an insight to the regional and cultural variations
experienced by the 4 partners who come from culturally diverse settings.
The videos are designed for youth workers who embark on the practice of
drama or dance facilitation. Subtitles will be in Spanish, Galician, English,
Greek and Turkish.
3. Four Training Programmes
A training course of 100 hours (deliverable in flexible formats) for theatre-
makers and dancers in facilitation youth work using their discipline. The
course will implement the programme description in the manuals. This will
be a way of testing the written material, which can be changed or amended
through feedback from the course participants.
Each of the 4 partners will deliver a training course in their own country.
They will be responsible for recruiting and selecting the participants, findig
the venue, resourcing it with appropriate staff or teachers/tutors, and
scheduling the training.
There will be 10 participants aged over 18 on each course. As each partner
will run one course in the final year of the project, there will be a total of 40
cultural youth workers trained in youth drama or youth dance facilitation.
The programmes will use the manuals as guidance and teaching tools to
run the programmes.
4. Four Visits of Specialist Artists to each partner
There will be 4 mobility of youth workers (artists). Each mobility will
bring a youth worker (trainer) from a partner to work with one other partner
during the course of the project. This youth worker will help train the
participates of the training programme, and explore the methods used by
the host organisation. The mobility will be 3 days for each youth worker.
The youth worker will be an expert in their field be able to teach advanced
practice in youth drama or youth dance facilitation. They will be staff of the
partner organisations.
The trainer from FOCO, Spain will go to Kinitiras, Greece
The trainer from Kinitiras, Greece will go to Crooked House, Ireland
The trainer from Crooked House, Ireland will go to SDU, Türkiye
The trainer from SDU, Türkiye will go to FOCO, Spain.
The programme, and the dates, for each of the visits will be worked out and
developed between the partners. However, they will occur during the last
phase of the project when there are participants in each organisation
training in drama and dance facilitation.
5. Supervised Practice
As part of the training programme, each participant will be supported to
undertake a ‘placement’ with a youth group in their locality or community.
The youth group could be a school, a youth project, a once-off summer
camp, an informal group of young people, or any grouping of young people
aged between 13 and 30. Each of the partner organisations already has
several youth projects established or within their network which can be
used to support this activity. The participants of the training programme will
plan and deliver at least 6 workshop sessions with this group. They may be
supported by the professional facilitator, teacher, youth worker or expert
who already runs the group. Three of these sessions will be observed by a
professional youth drama or dance facilitator who is competent in training
facilitators and who is able to give supportive and guiding feedback to help
improve the practice of learners.
This visit is called a Placement Supervision Visit. We are using the model
developed for the training of adult educators, youth workers, and
community workers in Ireland by Maynooth University.
6. Online Clinics
The project plans that there will be 10 online video sessions of 90
minutes duration. They will bring together all of the trainee facilitators
along with hosts. They will take the form of clinics where participants can
share problems they are having in drama/dance facilitation, issues that
arise for them in the placements, propose solutions to the problems raised,
share resources and tips that they have encountered, and ultimately grow a
community of practitioners that will sustain and support each other over
the coming years. The sessions will be once per month. The work of the
sessions will be complimented by a project WhatsApp group for the 40
trainees and their facilitators.
In this way we hope to encourage the participants to establish a network
that will continue after the project ends. They can share employment
opportunities, training and other resources.
Complimentary Mobility Activity
The beneficiary organisation, which is an accredited organisation for youth,
will run a mobility of youth workers project in 2027 to which are invited
the 40 participants of the drama and dance facilitation courses. This will
happen before the courses commence. The aim of the mobility, a
professional development activity, will be to introduce the youth workers to
creative youth work in practice. This way, the participants will get to know
each other before they embark on the 100 hours of training at home.
This mobility will not be funded from the Key Action 2 programme but will
use a separate funding source.
Target groups
The project is targeted at artists over 18 who have trained in theatre or
dance and who now wish to find a way to apply their skills in youth work
settings. It will train them in youth drama and youth dance facilitation,
support them in applying their training to placement settings, and enhance
their employability as cultural youth workers.
This project is also aimed at youth work organisation who wish to use
theatre and dance in their practice with young people as tools for the
development of emotional and physical well bring, and as methods of
enhancing youth work aims and processes.
To that end we will develop online recourses that can be accessed by youth
work organisations internationally.
The project ultimately targets young people aged 13 to 30 in 4 countries. It
hopes to increase the availability in Ireland, Turkey, Greece and Spain of
accessible, inclusive, and competently delivered youth dance and youth
theatre programmes to young people that promote their personal, social
and political growth as citizens.
We will do this by each training 10 artists who will be ready to establish
their own cultural youth work practice after the project ends. In Ireland,
there is already a well serviced and developed youth theatre sector, of
which the beneficiary partner (Crooked House) is a senior and respected
leader. The Irish project, therefore, will focus a little more on the training of
youth dance facilitators and actors who use physical theatre skills to work
with young people for youth work purposes.
Duration
The project will last for 36 months. It will begin on 31 st December 2025 and
conclude on 30th December 2028.
Appendix 1
How drama facilitation training enhances the employability of young actors
and dancers in Ireland. These are mostly young people with fewer
opportunities than their peers who have spent a year with Crooked House
Theatre Company in Kildare on a European Solidarity Corps programme.
After our European Solidarity Corps training project
- one young Turkish ESC volunteer became Artistic Director of Sligo
Youth Theatre (Ozer Gokmen – volunteer from 2022 – 2023)
- one Egyptian became a paid drama facilitator with Making Waves
Youth Theatre, Greystones (Abdelmomeim Nassef, ESC programme
from 2022 – 2023)
- a young Irish participant became a second drama facilitator with
Making Waves Youth Theatre (Cian Ó Náraigh, Kildare Youth Theatre
participant)
- a Syrian volunteer became the Artistic Director of Carlow Youth
Theatre (Ola Al Mamlouk, ESC volunteer 2022 – 2023)
- a French volunteer became an employee of Carlow Kilkenny ETB
running a dance programme in Carlow Institute of Further Education
(Pauline Sartori, ESC volunteer 2023 – 2024)
- 3 volunteers (from Tunisia and Turkey) run Kildare Youth Theatre and
Outreach programmes (Halit Kayacan, Yakup Bas and Yassine
Barkaoui, ESC volunteers 2023 – 2024)
- 1 Turkish volunteer became employed as Crooked House’s company
manager (Oguzhan Sahin, ESC volunteer 2020 – 2021)
- 1 Spanish volunteer is now the Outreach Facilitator with Smashing
Times Theatre Company in Dublin (Carmen Ortiz, Erasmus+ Student
Trainee, 2022 – 2023)
- 1 Greek volunteer is now Programme Development Officer with the
Irish Theatre Institute (Narod Shahinian, ESC volunteer 2022 – 2023)
- 1 Greek volunteer is employed by the national agency, Léargas, as
Inclusion and Impact Officer (Vasiliki Psarra, ESC volunteer 2018 –
2019)
Other volunteers have returned home after their training to create
employment at home.
Juan Escalona and Gonzalo Martinez Ramiro establish FOCO Europa in 2021
(they were ESC volunteers in 2019 to 2020)
Joel Pla Garriga established Escola Teatre de Le Seu in Catalunya after this
ESC volunteering (2017 – 2018)
Marco Mazza became employed as an actor and drama facilitator in theatre
in education in Italy after his ESC volunteering year from 2020 – 2021.
Everyone above was trained weekly for a year by Anna Galligan and Peter
Hussey in Drama Facilitation with Young People.
Appendix 2
Research into the specific positive impact of theatre and dance on human
growth and development.
Research such as Elliot Eisner’s What do the Arts teach? Explains the
positive cognitive processes that arts teach
([Link]
v=h12MGuhQH9E&ab_channel=VanderbiltUniversity) while the late
educational psychologist, Sir Ken Robinson championed the use of arts as
tools for human growth and development in schools
([Link]
s). More specifically, researchers have shown the value of collaborative
theatre and dance to youth. Peter Hussey’s 2019 research in A Machine for
Generating Happiness shows how collaborative theatre making with young
people is one of the few resources left to them to develop resilience
(chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/[Link]
gr/Portals/0/main/images/stories/files/Magazine/T20/T20_EN_Hussey.pdf?
ver=2019-11-01-091952-610)
Hussey writes “When young people are engaged in an aesthetic experience
they don’t have ‘room’ in their brains to think about their depression or
debilitating anxiety. Their neural pathways are engaged in a kind of
mindfulness, being fully in the moment.”
Rhonda Blair and others have researched the changes in cognition when
actors and dancers are performing. They show how the brain changes to
produce positive and affirming patterns of neurology that often combat the
cortisol driven thinking of anxiety and introspection.
[Link]
9781472591784/
In Theatre and Mind Bruce A. McConachie researches the processes
performers undergo when they are in a room together creating theatre or
exploring the world through drama. He maintains that life-enhancing skills,
dormant since childhood, are activated and developed by the good practice
of drama. [Link]
9780230275836/