Sami: Creative Communities FASS Internship at The Dukes

Sami was a Creative Communities intern at The Dukes for three months and worked across various projects such as Young Company, Prime Time and Young Carers as part of their employability experience, here are Sami’s reflections: 

Young Company (at The Dukes) is a wonderful opportunity for children ages eight to eighteen to get involved in the performing arts, and it has been an incredible honour to assist in the facilitation of these sessions. As someone who attended their own local youth theatre, I know how important extra curriculars like this can be to a child’s development. Even if they don’t end up taking an interest in drama and following that path, the hour and a half spent having fun and learning new skills each week with friends is crucial to building their confidence. I wouldn’t be the person I am now without my youth theatre, and I have only grown more confident since getting to be a part of this young company.

The skills I have developed during my time with the Young Company are incredibly invaluable. I helped to run the drama club at my high school for years, so getting to enhance those skills in such a professional environment has been a wonderful experience. Seeing how The Dukes operated for its young people was very enlightening, the care given to each Young Company session was astounding and could be seen in the kids’ enjoyment of their time with us. This is why I would love to see them more involved in things like the Park Show, or even getting them a few more experiences during Young Company term time like the Summer School offers once a year.

The main part of my role was helping to facilitate our weekly sessions. I would lead games like Buzzy Bees or Splat and then take on a group to supervise during activities. At the start of the term, before our change in practitioners, the kids were working towards a group sharing, and I had a group in each session that I would help to direct. My favourite was our youngest group who were performing a script about sentient crayons in a box. Whilst it could sometimes be a bit of a challenge keeping them focused on the task, watching them come up with ideas and begin to put them into practice was so rewarding – and very entertaining. I also loved getting to know the older kids better in their smaller groups, divided off from the main cohort they were able to come out of their shells more and it was lovely getting to watch their confidence grow in themselves and their skills.

Working with our freelance practitioners was a great experience too. Getting to collaborate with them on the structure of the sessions and come up with a plan that would – hopefully – keep the kids interested and enthusiastic. It was a little difficult to motivate them without the sharing event to work towards, so it could be a bit hit-and-miss from week to week. However, finding the right game for the kids was like hitting the jackpot. One of our more sneakily educational games, The Bus, was about teaching the kids what it was like to have an objective as a character. We would give each of the kids a secret objective they had to carry out during the improvised scene on the bus. For the secret vampire, it was obviously best if nobody could guess their aim. But for the vampire hunter, they needed to know who the vampire on the bus was. It was a real test for me as well, having to come up with fresh and unique aims for every child each time we played, but it helped to keep my creativity flowing.

The Bus became an unexpected favourite of the groups, them begging for just one more round every time we said we had to move on. This was another skill I developed within these sessions. Time management was supremely important to make sure we could fit everything we needed to fit in into the hour and a half. So, it was up to me to keep track of time and make sure one task wasn’t eating up all of our session without giving it such little space that the kids couldn’t learn anything significant from it.

Another part of my job was helping to facilitate the Alice in Wonderland workshops we did onsite at local primary schools in partnership with Lancaster House Hotel. These sessions were a bit of a challenge as we were working in unfamiliar environments and were limited by the size of the spaces we were in. It was all about thinking on our feet to ensure they ran as smoothly as possible to give the kids as much as we could. Helping them to devise their own Mad Hatter tea party scenes was so much fun, and it was greatly rewarding to bring a bit more creativity into their school. We also brought Sam the Dog along with us too which was an experience in and of itself. Of everything I have got out of this internship, my turn in a mascot costume was the most unexpected to say the least.

I have loved my time with Young Company. This was the part of the job I was worried about the most as I love working with children, but I find it hard to tell if I’m actually any good at it. The groups were so welcoming, however, and so enthusiastic. I had so much fun with them all that I could hardly believe I was getting paid to do it. I will miss working with them sorely, but I am so grateful for the skills I have learnt alongside them and for the Dukes giving me the opportunity to do so.