A welcome for young people

Good to see the reminder (posted 7 October) of the achievements of our 1812 Youth Theatre. It has been remarkably successful over the years since it started in the 1990s. It has at any one time at least sixty members and a waiting list. Many stay with the company for years.

Recent memorable productions have included The Visit, Dracula, Do We Ever See Grace, and their next one is Willy Russell's Our Day Out, showing on 13th and 14th November, at 7.30pm, tickets £5 (or £3 concessions).We hope to see you there.

But they're not the only young people to use the Centre. There's the regular ballet classes, on Mondays and Saturdays, with nearly a hundred dancers. The quality of teaching is high, as is the commitment of the students. Many of them work towards Royal College of Dance exams and this year 24 entered and 24 passed, 6 with distinction.

In addition, each summer we organise theatre and dance workshops, such as the highly successful five days of work this summer with Pilot Theatre from York.

We're particularly pleased this year to have become a centre for the Arts Award programme for young people aged from 11 to 25, with a team of seven newly trained advisers. For more about this see our website newsletter. Added to which we are now applying to be registered as an Arts Award Welcome Centre.

And we are delighted to be a centre for a project organised through the Ryedale Theatre Association called Inspired, which has already begun to take groups of children from a number of Ryedale schools to various theatrical venues to see good theatre or to join in theatre workshops.

As well as making sure we have theatre and music in the theatre to appeal to a wide range of ages, we also welcome other youth theatre groups to perform, such as the Scarborough based company, Raised Eyebrow Youth Theatre.

Finally, we've just started a filming group which includes people from 14 to 30, to find out more contact Jez Coram, and finally we have a song writing group has recently begun meeting here once a month - further details from Jean Kershaw.

It's a busy place!