A year at Beyond Face - 2024 Edition

From new team members and a growing Youth Company to two full-length productions and a whole bunch of Artist Development opportunities, it’s been rewarding 2024 connecting and creating with global majority artists and awesome partnerships throughout the year! Check out our highlights below.

Photography: Naomi Williams

Artist Development

2024 for our Artist Development strand has been a moment of planning, growth and reinvention. We began the year with Scratch and Share, a We are Here to Share event co-produced with Doorstep Arts in Torbay. It was an event where artists and young people from Beyond Face, Doorstep Arts and Dreamarts shared the stage, showing work either made for or by young people and despite the cold temperatures outside, it was an event filled with warmth and joy. We also hosted our We are Here to Write scratch, with rehearsed readings of extracts of plays written by members of our writers group.

We launched our Associate Artists programme, in partnership with MAST Mayflower Studios, Bristol Old Vic, Theatre Royal Plymouth and Landmark Theatres and continued to meet different artists based across the South West who are all making unique, compelling work.

We have felt a greater engagement with our programmes this year, with more people than ever applying to take part in our scratch nights and our Associate Artists programme and some brilliant masterclasses as part of our We are Here to Write group

Finally, our Take Space to Lead programme, which is our Theatre Practitioner training programme for global majority artists which we are running alongside Strike a Light has been launched and we have confirmed our brilliant cohort.

It has also been a total moment of joy to follow artists within our programmes flourish and observe their additional achievements, from winning prizes, to having their work performed for the first time, to applying for funding and making work. Looking ahead to 2025, we’re excited for more opportunities to provide a platform for the work of global majority artists across the region.

Productions

We begun the year with a Grow Up! our Youth Company production in partnership with Company Three, Mortal Fools and Prime Theatre. Where we each created new full-length plays using the prompt ‘Grow Up’. Our young actors then spent time on how they would like to explore this phrase through theatre. What develop out of this prompt, was a story about a young girl who gets given the choice to grow up or stay young. We then took this tale of magic, choice and the beauty or challenge of different times in our lives to Plymouth in February for two nights

Later in the year we toured the developed production of Sitting in the Grey, a story of change and young people/adult dynamics, which was requested by young people in Plymouth. When asked what they’d like to see a play about, they responded with wanting something that reflects the frustration they feel around the disconnect between themselves and adults. Something highlighting that they often don’t feel listened to, especially as global majority young people .Our 3 month tour concluded with a sold out show and brilliant panel talk!

Our Creative Education Producer, Amy Saleh also created educational resources that accompany ‘Sitting in the Grey’ , including the teacher CPD which will be piloted in a secondary school in the new year! “It’s been a great experience working on this and getting to drop into rehearsals while seeing the script develop over time. I’m excited to see schools engage with these and offer feedback for ongoing development.”

(P.S look out for excitign production announcements next year!)

Young People 

We have continued our amazing relationship with Lipson Co-Operative Academy and Millbay Academy in Plymouth, delivering our weekly Young Theatre Maker (YTM) sessions for Year 7-9 students from the Global Majority. We’ve welcomed two new Assistant Practitioners to work alongside Project Manager Bee Jarvis, and it has been a wonderful term working together.

We focused on exploring themes of friendship, social justice, joy, and curiosity, through a multitude of artistic lenses, giving our YTM’s a taste of the magical world of Theatre and enabling important conversation and conceptualisations through artistic expression. Our themes are co-curated by the Young people themselves, where we listen and respond to their interests, and create workshops informed by this.

A MOJ from this was when Millbay YTM made placards and choreographed a protest-dance, inspired by watching Sitting In The Grey in their school. Or when Lipson YTM created a vision of their future-selves and introduced themselves through movie posters and improv scenes, dedicated to their ambition and determination of who they want to be. It’s been a beautiful journey together, and we can’t wait to see what the next term brings!

Regional Voices

In 2024 we have spent time reconnecting with previous participants and consulting them on our plans for next year, we’ve had really fruitful and engaging conversations and are leaving the year feeling excited for the plans to com!.

We also worked with Exeter Northcott and Sandhya Dave of Devon Diversity Consultants on The Rhythm of Us, were we spent a term working with the group looking at different skills around performance, play, storytelling and writing. Participants of this Encompass Group shared how they’ve incorporated games and activities learnt during our sessions at their work places. They’ve also expressed how it offered them a space to reconnect with little joys they haven’t explored in a while, such as singing. Later in the year we then introduced a new part of Regional Voices known as Story-tell, a chance for global majority people to come together and celebrate their heritage!

Partnerships

We have partnered with several organisations this year to host events, and collaborate on touring our shows, such as Sitting in the Grey. One such successful partnership is with Doorstep Arts in Torbay, who we collaborated with in February to host a joint scratch night in Paignton- Scratch & Share. The Beyond Face Youth Company performed an extract of Grow Up! (which itself was being made in partnership with Company Three, Mortal Fools and Prime Theatre) and at this event, there were performances from DreamArts, Doorstep Arts Youth Theatre and South West based Global Majority artists. We then worked in conjunction with Doorstep Arts to bring Sitting in the Grey to secondary schools in Torbay as part of our recent tour, where it was seen by 700 people! 

In spring we became a Associate Company at Bristol Old Vic alongside Diverse Artists Network, MAYK and Theatre West. This despoke relationship will allow us to collborate with Bristol Old Vic to increase the depth of offers we can provide to artists within the city.

We are grateful to Widening Participation at University of Plymouth who continue to support our young people’s work in Plymouth. Our partnership with Millbay Academy through our Young Theatre Makers work, has enabled us to bring Sitting in the Grey to the school for 281 people and Creative Education Producer Amy Saleh team will be running Teacher CPD in the school in the Spring Term 2025. 

Thank you to everyone who has engaged with us this year, whether that be as a participant, parent bringing the young people to the sessions, teachers, audiences in person and online! Thank you to our wonderful funders for having the work we do possible.

-Alix, Helen, Emily, Corinne, Tamera, Amy and Bee

Photography by Dom Moore and SouthWest Theatre Photography