Chichester Festival Youth Theatre celebrate their 40th birthday

Matt Hawksworth, the CFT’s head of children & young people's programme, is delighted to confirm the anniversary programme that is coming together.

“We are going to be doing a singing celebration on August 1 in Oaklands Park, a free event starting at 6pm. The format is going to be a celebration of song with as many young people as possible, some with singing experience and some not. We now have a youth theatre singers group, and we will be inviting all of our CFYT members to come along for a collective moment. We are hoping to have a couple of guest CFYT alumni. The whole thing is going to be really informal. We now have 800 youth theatre members and it will be an open invitation for everyone to come along.

“The second component for the year will be an alumni exhibition which will be put together by Helena (Berry, the CFT’s heritage and archive manager). She will be curating a special celebration of all those who have gone before and what they have gone on to do maybe on stage or backstage or people have gone on to do other things entirely. It will be in the foyer for the autumn, and with 40 years of Chichester Festival Youth Theatre we're talking potentially thousands of people that have passed through who might be offering their memories.”

The third component in the celebration will be a special gala performance of Chichester Festival Youth Theatre’s Christmas show A Boy Called Christmas on Sunday, December 21: “The idea is to bring together as many alumni and extended family of Chichester Festival Youth Theatre as possible.”

The show itself, by Matt Haig, adapted for the stage by Philip Wilson and directed by Dale Rooks, will run from December 15-31 – all part of a very special year.

“I think Chichester Festival Youth Theatre is pretty unique in terms of its reach and its longevity and the fact that it is really central to what we do here at the theatre. The outreach that we have is not just an add-on. It is really part of the fabric of the building. It takes many different units to build a show, and it's really fantastic that everybody is going to rally around to celebrate.

“With the celebrations I want the young people to be really proud of their achievements whether they have worked with freelancers or with the team here and to be really proud of the incredible quality of the artistic content that they have created but it is also about championing the importance for young people of having meaningful things to engage with. Life can be tough so it is important for any organisation that works with young people to offer wonderful opportunities. Through the youth theatre our young people are learning so many different skills, and that is really powerful. All this is extra curricular. They are learning skills whether it's dance or puppetry or singing or acting, but they also value being together. It is about the bonds that they form with each other. A lot of them will talk about the youth theatre as being a family. You talk to former youth theatre members and many of them will talk about having been to each other’s weddings or having been there for each other’s life milestones.

“But I think the final element in it all is that these are young people who are being heard and who are being listened to. Chichester Festival Youth Theatre and other youth theatres give children and young people the space to talk about how they're feeling and the issues that are important to them. It could be escapism but we know also how important it is that they can talk directly about the things that concern them.”

What might come as a surprise to people during the anniversary year is to discover the sheer scale of the youth theatre in terms of its ongoing weekly activities: “Every single week we have 42 weekly Chichester Festival Youth Theatre groups and every week we see more than 800 young people and children. The strands are acting and dancing and singing and specialist groups for young people with additional needs and also our technical youth theatre groups. Some people come to one group. Some people come to multiple groups and spend most of their after-school hours with us!”

Crucial too is the fact that the youth theatre has seven satellite groups, namely Bognor Regis, Billingshurst, Horsham, Littlehampton, Midhurst, Portsmouth and Worthing.

“To call them satellite groups is very Arts Council speak. We prefer to think of them as local groups. We are meeting young people and families where they are. We use a primary school and a church hall and we have a leisure centre and we also use a library. We carefully choose these sites so that young people can get there in an affordable way.

“And what I love about these groups is that each one has a distinct personality. Bognor feels very different to Littlehampton which feels very different to Portsmouth. The young people put their own stamp on each of these groups.”

Important too is the fact that up to 23 per cent of all CFYT participants have a bursary, either a full bursary or a half-price bursary: “And that is fantastic in opening it up to everyone, in making sure that the youth theatre is accessible to everyone.”