Celebrating 50 Years of BYT

The environment

The project has helped to redevelop our outdoor spaces and bring more people into our natural woodland, engaging more people with the environment. We also commissioned a Biodiversity report of our site so we can better understand the setting and engage better with what we can be doing to aid our natural environment to develop. The Carnival Week piece that we created included themes of environmental impact on natural local areas and how humans are damaging these areas. It was a provocative piece which made the audience question their environmental impact.

Volunteering, jobs & education

The project engaged with 30 volunteers including our Young Archivist volunteer group. It also employed two part time members of staff on fixed term contracts and a number of freelance artists.

Arts, culture & heritage

Summer Showcase We invited our local community into our venue and grounds for the day to watch short performances by our youth theatre groups, take part in creative activities and take part in our new Heritage Trail. This free event saw local people come together to celebrate with us, learn about what we do now and explore our history through the trail and exhibition.  Heritage Trail We worked with the Wildlife Trust to redevelop our outside space into a circular path through the woods. We then worked with 5 schools to create a trail of sculptures made out of willow based on characters from our archive of productions including The Wizard of Oz, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, The Wind in the Willows, Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland and Pinocchio.  Each sculpture has signage with a QR code where visitors can scan it and are taken to our website and given more information about times we have performed that show over the past 50 years and photographs / other archive material.  The Heritage Trail was built in tandem with our new outdoor classroom which was funded by a capital grant from Arts Council England. What we didn’t expect when building the trail was that due to the building being on the site of an old landfill, when they started to dig, lots of rubbish began to come up from the ground. Once the path and outdoor classroom were finished and everything was tidied up, we hoped the site would be clear and safe however the rubbish keeps coming up from the ground and this at times includes old bottles / smashed glass. This has made the area a risk factor and although any visits up there are supervised and the rubbish doesn’t affect the actual trail / path, the surrounding areas need to be constantly checked to ensure it is safe for the public to access. To solve this issue, we are currently working with a landscape gardener who is going to put a new membrane down on the affected areas and cover with top soil / bark to ensure it is safe for people to access and the trail can be properly launched in Spring 2024.  Carnival Week  We looked through our archive to explore different styles of performance and creativity that had been delivered over the past 50 years. In August 2023, we ran a masterclass week ‘Carnival Week’ which explored BYT’s rich history with carnival, street theatre and promenade performance, taking inspiration from internationally renowned theatre company Welfare State who occupied BYT’s site in the early 1970s just before we moved onto the site. Young people took part in workshops, built giant puppets and created a performance ‘The Briercliffe Fairies’ which they performed at Burnley Canal Festival.  Time Capsule  We created a time capsule which will permanently hang in the foyer of BYT. It is intended that it won’t be opened until 2073, when the organisation turns 100 years old. The time capsule includes printed photos captured during the 50th year, programmes for the shows, BYT merchandise, a USB with our 50th Year videos and a letter from our current Youth Board to the future Youth Board. Schools Art Project  We worked with 5 local primary schools, engaging children from a diverse range of backgrounds, to create the willow sculptures for the Heritage Trail. Children from every year group in each school, worked with artist Sarah Gallagher Heyes to learn the technique of willow weaving to create sculptures of well known characters. Members of our team also spoke to the children about the title they were working on and engaged them with Burnley Youth Theatre’s history of performing this story.  A small group of children from each school attended Burnley Youth Theatre in September 2023 to see their work in situ and take part in a tour of the trail including using tablets to scan the QR codes and explore the archive photographs for each show.  Theatre Tour  Burnley Youth Theatre has a rich history of creating theatre in education which aims to educate and challenge young people on topics relevant to them. We created a new piece of theatre, Toxic, which celebrated our history by bringing a challenging, fresh and provoking performance to local young people. It tackled the topic of Toxic Masculinity and the influence of social media on young people - it was created and performed by four local young people who worked with a professional theatre director and writer and toured to Year 9 and 10 pupils in four local schools. Sharing Stories We delivered a series of workshops in community settings to reach out to people in the community who might not normally engage with Burnley Youth Theatre or the arts in general. These workshops worked with groups including refugees and Young Carers and shared BYT’s rich history and its impact on Burnley in exchange for the rich history of the people living in our town and all that they have experienced.  Young Archivists Our Young Archivists were a group of youth volunteers who met weekly with our Heritage Curator Fiona Hornby and our Programme Manager Matthew Baker. The volunteer programme involved supporting the digitising of our archive, learning oral history techniques and interviewing people for podcasts, supporting the planning and delivery of 50th Anniversary events and fundraising for the project including bake sales, face painting and individual fundraising challenges. This was a main volunteer programme within the project and the young people involved gained so many new skills alongside learning about the organisation’s history and the part they play in the future of BYT.

Activity, health and leisure

The project promoted activity and leisure through providing a variety of events, activities and workshops that local people could get involved with both at Burnley Youth Theatre and in their communities / schools. It also had an impact on improving mental health and well being particularly for children and young people who were direct participants throughout the project.