3Place involve: How do we involve the young audiences in a way they feel represented?

To develop 3Place – involve – artistic – physical, each partner has chosen the topic based on their strengths, resources and needs for development. Each topic has a year-long focus with a camp, a festival visit, digital workshops and ongoing field work in each organisation and their community.

JES will focus on 3Place Involve

JES: Stuttgart’s childrens and youth theatre, Junges Ensemble Stuttgart has developed a very broad standing as part of the city’s culture for young people. In the last twenty years the three pillars of the theatre – productions for young audiences, participatory work with children and youth and the international festival Schöne Aussicht – have manifested themselves as being interlinked and to strengthen each other. But the users of these three pillars vary: 

1. the audience for the productions are mainly schools and kindergartens with the biggest diversity possible because it’s as diverse as the city itself. 
2. The users of the participatory programs – devised shows with young people, workshops, training – are mainly white, privileged, ready to express and challenge themselves through theatre. 
3. Schöne Aussicht attracts mainly international and invited guests – adults. Since many years however the goal is to find crossovers in the audiences of these three pillars also. With specific offers to exclusive groups (LGBTQAI*, children with more than one mother language,
   youth with immigrant background, children with disabilities) the diversity of the voluntary audience grows and will provide a good foundation for the activities of 3Place.
   

JES Seeks to find ways to intertwine the objects of Involve in changing how their existing venue is conceived and used and the possibility of bringing their performances out to other local contexts in Stuttgart. In 2022 JES will start fresh with a new artistic director and team to build on existing structure but focus even more on involvement of children and youth in all aspects of its work. JES will implement a supervisory board of directors consisting of kids and youth – the Draufsichtsrat. As a long-term project, the first steps of organising and inviting young people to join this board will be taken already this summer. The realisation and execution will be hugely defined by the participants, but also by best-practice examples from other theatres and the exchange with the international partners from this project. The students taking part in the exchange visits and formats of this EU project will come from the Draufsichtsrat and the experience and knowledge will then flow right back into their work. Since many kids and students have their first theatre experience at the JES Stuttgart, the programming must be inclusive and accessible for inexperienced theatre viewers.

Language, production, topics and experience must always be in alignment with the audience. As artistic research, this is one of the main goals of the participation. Already JES is seeking for stronger collaborations with the young in their artistic work, making shows with mixed casts, research periods for productions together with their audiences and in the future also inviting children and youth to become co-directors, co-dramaturgs and co-technicians.

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