EU project: Teen Ambassadors Across Europe

"Teen Ambassadors Across Europe" is a collaborative project that aims to develop a sustainable and inclusive method of audience engagement. We want to create concrete connections between artistic directors and youth audiences, so that young people themselves can have a role in the artistic direction of theater festivals and the programming of a theater season. Partners in the project are Norsk Scenekunstbruk, Segna d'Infanzia in Italy, Teatercentrum in Denmark, Krokusfestivalen in Belgium, Fundació Bancària "la Caixa" in Spain and Dialogue - The Community Performance Network from the UK.

Ambassadors

TEEN ambassadors spread performing arts experiences to their peers. Communication from youth to youth often creates a broader and stronger audience engagement than if teachers, parents or artistic leaders are responsible for the communication alone. The role of the TEEN ambassadors in this project will also be to represent their peers in discussions with artistic directors about what they want to see on stage. The purpose of giving young people real participation is to facilitate more engaging and inclusive theater experiences.

My activities

During the previous T.E.E.N. project, strategies and tools have been developed, and this will be used and further processed together with other countries in Teen Ambassadors Across Europe. We will reflect on school systems and the school's role in shaping young people's cultural experiences. The project will include teenagers in a process that:

brings them together in TAG (Theatre Action Group) in all partner countries, together with artistic leadership, a coordinator/supervisor and teachers.
promotes discussion between TAG participants about performing arts productions they have seen and will see, using Kitchen Table Discussion and the critical approach tested in the previous T.E.E.N. project.
allows them to work alongside artistic management to gain insight into how a festival or theater season is programmed and how their opinions and wishes can be taken into account without compromising the level of quality.
includes young people in the communication process around the performing arts production, to better understand how they can use social media and how their presence and suggestions can positively influence their peers.
promotes a reflection in the school system on how to emphasize educational needs and the teenager's emotional approach to theater.

By establishing curatorial teams with young people, the project aims to reach a younger and wider audience, ensure long-term engagement and provide social inclusion.

Teen Ambassadors Across Europe is an extension and further development of the EU project TEEN, which you can read more about here.