A group of young people in Leeds have been attending weekly workshops at the Yorkshire Academy of Film and Television Acting. Writer Dean Stalham and Stretch Director Carlotta Allum have been workshopping the script from a new social realism drama called ‘Tagged’, which was written by Dean and inspired by the story of Jamie, who has worked alongside Stretch for a while.
The workshops have been very successful and allowed the participants to learn new skills in performance and screen acting, meet new people and look at different ways to tell stories. Stretch is hoping to use this pilot project as a way to secure funding to continue the workshops, integrating elements of Stretch Digital so people’s own stories can influence the performative elements.
The young people have created a trailer for the film, and we’re in talks with producers and directors about getting the film made into a feature length or TV drama.
We want to continue to work with young people using this multi-disciplinary approach, equipping people with skills in new media to bridge the digital divide while encouraging people to consider pursuing the performing arts, a field which is currently dominated by privately educated people. We hope to introduce new ways of working which are pertinent to young people and make their voices and stories heard.
It is a fact that people from lower socio-economic groups are less likely to have their own internet accessible device and comprehensive IT education and we want to change that. Our proposed project uses an innovative multi-disciplinary approach to combine digital arts through digital storytelling (see our current project Stretch Digital) alongside drama workshops. The ‘more’ and ‘better’ we are striving for, involves not only making the stories with young people, but using these stories to explore theatre education and dramatisation of young people’s lives in ways relevant and engaging to them. Giving access to iPads and teaching skills in editing software, participants are encouraged to tap into their own experiences and create a personal digital narrative. We then use these often unheard voices as a spring board to explore issues and themes through a series of drama workshops.
