HotHouse Theatre's Youth Project

15 years ago, thanks to funding from Children in Need, Hothouse Theatre set up its first Film Club working with young people from the Brickyard Estate creating films and video reports. As a consequence, we have built up a unique relationship with many of the young people, many of whom have now become young adults.

These sessions were focused on engaging disadvantaged young people in the project, developing their self-confidence, self-esteem and increasing their aspirations.

The aim was to progress them on to other voluntary projects, to become involved in positive activity within their community, and to develop an improved attitude toward their future and their ability to make a difference.

The project had to change as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, and it went online and became an audio project, involving young people in the creation of podcasts, audio sketches, short plays and virtual trips including various themed trips around the world.

It is from this development that the idea for the Creative Youth project was born.

Last year we ran a pilot project to see if the ideas developed during COVID had the potential to be the basis for an ongoing project.

The pilot was a great success and we are now seeking funding to allow us to develop the project.

Below are some links to some of the audio projects done by the young people during COVID and the pilot.

• Woodthorpe Meadow – a podcast for Keeping It Wild - Nottingham Wildlife Trust
• The Grinch That Saved Christmas 2023's Christmas story
• The Avocado and the Flying Pig
• The Green Hustle 2023 a celebration of green activity in Nottingham
• Robin Hood - A New Yarn
• Village of the Scammed – a short audio play exploring issues around safety on the internet

The finished items appeared on the Oh My Nottz website.

Brickyard 15+

Thanks to Children in Need funding in 2017 we began a series of activities aimed at older young people on the Brickyard Estate. Some of these young people had started hanging around on the estate, were at 'a difficult age' and were getting a lot of negative feedback from the community. They had also started to put up barriers against their community and had started displaying antisocial behaviour. Some of these are past members of the Film Club, which gave us an excellent route in to engaging them in positive activity.

These sessions had been initially geared towards the specific interests of young people concerned, which involved a great deal of outreach work to get to know them better. This paid off.

We ran 1 session per month specifically aimed at this group. These initial sessions were adventurous, including paintball, go karting, rock climbing. Later sessions were aimed at directing them toward progression and personal development, including running careers advice sessions with Futures, the local careers advice project.

We will be looking for funding to allow us to bring this project into the Radio Youth project in the near future.

Lenton Film Club

This one-off project had 10 young people involved in creating a film from scratch using their ideas and some very inventive editing by Dan.

The young people were recruited through a combination of outreach work, visiting local schools and work with the Lenton Centre.

The finished film got it's World Premier at our AGM and went down extremely well. It formed part of the 'Christmas Stocking Bonus Edition 2020' of Oh My Nottz.