YOUNG AUDIENCES SCOTLAND is an exciting development on the Scottish cultural landscape.  It is a megaphone for the vibrancy and variety of theatre for children, young people and families in Scotland.

Created by the consortium of Catherine Wheels, the Bank of Scotland Children’s International Theatre Festival, Giant, TAG Theatre Company, Visible Fictions and Wee Stories and with funding from the Scottish Arts Council’s National Lottery fund, the ultimate aim of this pilot project is to increase and develop audiences for children and young people’s theatre across Scotland.

For the first time in Scotland, these 6 leading producers of theatre for children and young people have joined forces to harness their combined strengths and skills to achieve a greater understanding of their audiences and the potential to develop them, not only for themselves, but for the sector as a whole.

Young Audiences Scotland creates a rare opportunity for the companies involved to work together to implement a healthy mix of both tactical and strategic collaborative audience development, share training and support services. This is a very exciting project that promises to expose the benefits of organisations working together to build relationships and instigate sector-wide initiatives that could not have been achieved by the individual
companies alone.

Young Audiences Scotland is committed to developing younger audiences for theatre across Scotland, building on the remarkable reputations of it partners and the warm welcome the project has already received across Scotland’s performing arts and audience development community.

Key elements of the Young Audiences Scotland project are:

For our audiences

1. The creation of a central information website: http://www.youngaudiencesscotland.com.   This website has been developed for audiences, programmers and promoters of work for 0-25 year olds.  http://www.youngaudiencesscotland.com aims to develop a fluidity of experience from one company to another: encouraging more teachers, parents and carers, young people and children to enjoy the wealth of fine work currently being produced across Scotland.

This website also offers the opportunity to sign up to a FREE monthly e-newsletter service that will provide news and features on where to find and experience the very best in theatre for children and young people in Scotland.

For Educators
 
2. The development of a series of steering group meetings with Creative Links Officers/Cultural Coordinators and education practitioners.

As well as performing in traditional venues, the Young Audiences Scotland partnership companies present productions and educational activities for schools and in community venues. The aim of this relationship-building programme is to assess ways in which the sector can improve communications and engagement and to work together to achieve greater use of theatre within schools, helping pupils to develop the four capacities of the Curriculum for Excellence.

For the sector

3. Young Audiences Scotland will initiate a multi-stranded audience-profiling programme to improve the partnership’s understanding and knowledge of their existing and potential audiences for work in the Children and Young People’s theatre sector.

To support this, we will also work closely with key organisations within the sector, imaginate, TAB, GGA, Hi-Arts and FST, towards developing our knowledge of research and participation in audience development initiatives across the sector specific to Children and Young People’s Theatre.

For the partners

4. Young Audiences Scotland will develop and manage an internal training programme that will include mentoring and skills building to harness the skills and vibrancy operating within the partnership.