Fear Love Hate
Key Partners
- Puppet Animation Scotland
- Creative Links Team – Fife Council
- Kinetic
Partners
- Red Kite Animation
- The Puppet Lab
- Kinetic Films
Audience
Target group was young people from within a regeneration area; 15 young people of mixed sex from the Levenmouth area of Fife.
Process/activity
An entire theatrical experience was devised, written and performed by the young people. Through a process of confidence building, practical workshops and creative brainstorming a trust, within the group and towards the team of arts workers, was established. Using a combination of giant puppetry, animation, theatre, mime, and music theatre the group explored a range of issues relevant to the teenage condition in the 21st century. With the guidance, support and expertise of the Key Partners the group were able to express these concerns openly and confidently before a community audience of family and friends. The project has produced confident individuals with a greater sense of respect for themselves and others and an ability to understand and tolerate different beliefs and views from their own.
Context
The Creative Links Team and Puppet Animation Scotland collaborated to devise a method of achieving separate but complimentary objectives. Puppet Animation Scotland was keen to increase accessibility to The Puppet Animation Festival in Fife to include a teenage audience, while The Creative Links Team was interested in exploring the use of animation as an art form in theatre with teenagers. This creative consultation project was devised as a pilot scheme to fuse both sets of objectives and examine the success of the outcome.
Aim
The aim was the inclusion young people from a broad social spectrum to create a piece of puppet and animation theatre addressing the issues of being a teenager in the 21st century from a young persons perspective.
Objectives
The objective of this creative consultation project was to engage young people in an open exploration of their feelings with regard to how they live their lives, their concerns and aspirations and how they wished to address them. The project sought an innovative and creative way of involving groups of young people to engender self worth and a positive contribution within their community. In addition to building self and social confidence of the participants, the promotion of a sense of well-being and creativity was seen as central to the project. An important aspect of the venture was to challenge audience perception of issues concerning teenagers.
Outcome
The project created a multi-arts piece of ‘process-driven’ theatre examining ‘What it means to be a teenager in the 21st century’ focusing on the participants driving the design and delivery of the piece.
Achievement
This project was invited to be showcased at The National Youth Theatre Week in Glasgow by the Director of Youth Theatre Scotland.
It was also invited by the Scottish Government to be showcased at their 5 Nations Conference in
February 2008
