It’s been a busy weekend for the 20 Stories High gang with two amazing festivals two days in a row.

On Friday ten of our Youth Theatre members headed over to The Dukes in Lancaster for their Duke’s Invitational Youth Theatre Festival. We always love meeting, mingling, sharing work, ideas and (most importantly) FOOD with other youth theatres.

The theme of the day was identity and the group got to choose from a selection of workshops run by three professional artists (including 20 Stories High Associate Artist Nathan Crossan-Smith who was there to represent). Interspersed with brilliant performances, jam sessions and pizza and pasta galore, the day was a fantastic chance to see some of the great youth theatre work taking place across the North West. Big thanks to The Dukes for making us feel so welcome.

The theme of identity carried on into Saturday when emerging artists Dorcas Sebuyange and Bradley Thompson headed down to The MAC in Birmingham to perform our mini pop-up show African Beach Party at The Social Exchange – an explosive and immersive festival and creative marketplace hosted by Beatfreeks, a creative youth engagement agency based in Birmingham.

It’s so brilliant to be invited to be a part of such lively, stimulating and fun young person centred festivals and events. It’s busy weekends like this that invigorate us and remind us of the incredible creativity, ambition and drive of young people in the UK today so to all those who planned, performed or just attended we say… THANK YOU!