At the start of the lockdown, we set ourselves two challenges. To continue to provide our young people with support, connection and a space to express themselves. And to share our practice with as many organisations and artists as possible.

Within two weeks we had created the Coronavirus Time Capsule, a record of the pandemic by teenagers everywhere.

More than 250 people signed up to make one and – as far as we can see – there are now many more than 100 groups actively making videos every week. These include companies in every part of the UK and in 20 countries worldwide, from large NPOs to tiny community arts companies (and major international theatres in Amsterdam).

We want to say thank you to Nick Hern Books, the Unicorn Theatre, Central School of Speech and Drama, the National Association of Youth Theatres, Scottish Youth Theatre and Youth Arts Network Cymru for supporting the project.

Emergency funding

Last week we received emergency funding from both Arts Council England and Islington Giving. We want to thank them for their support.

We are aware that many organisations and individuals will not have received financial support in this way, so we want to be open about how we plan to use the money and to make sure we benefit as many artists, young people and organisations in doing so.

The funding will ensure that Company Three can continue to provide consistency and support for our 75 young people, stability for our small team of four core staff and work for up to twenty freelancers.

Supporting our members

We will continue to support our members on a weekly basis, running workshops, masterclasses, skills development and games nights. We will also start a new project supporting those members who have left Company Three in the last few years.

Whilst continuing to work on the Time Capsule project, we will begin to develop a new piece of work which we hope will capture young people’s hopes for a post-Coronavirus world and develop into something we can share with other youth theatres after the time capsule has finished.

Extending the Coronavirus Time Capsule

This funding means we can expand the Coronavirus Time Capsule until the end of the summer term – creating ten more fully resourced weeks of activity (a total of 18 weeks).

We have also launched a more flexible Compact Time Capsule for schools and youth groups. We are working on this in partnership with the Anna Freud Centre for Children and Families, with whom we are also discussing future applications of the Time Capsule in research and therapeutic practice.

We will using this version to create a new Islington Time Capsule, working with Islington Council to support and make space for young people across the borough.

To help manage the demands the Time Capsule has placed on our staff, we are recruiting for a part-time Marketing Co-ordinator (open now) and will be creating a separate website to properly showcase the voices of young people involved in the project.

Developing youth theatre

We believe that youth theatre can be a galvanising force in revitalising theatre and preparing our whole industry for the future. A key part of achieving this will be ensuring we have a genuinely representative workforce. Our work on the Coronavirus Time Capsule has made us want to take more responsibility for driving this change.

Our first action will be a free online Making Theatre for Young People course for artists who want to run or set up youth theatres but do not see themselves represented in its leadership. This will take place in June/July - details to follow soon.

We want to continue to support, learn from and challenge our sector, offering open spaces, running training and sharing our resources. If you run (or want to run) a youth theatre and think that we might have something that will be useful to you (a document, policy, blueprint or business plan), please ask us - if we have it, we’ll give it to you.

Most importantly, through all our work we will continue to advocate for the rights of young people to express themselves and the changes they want to make – in theatre and in the world.