News
Keep checking this page for all the latest Toonspeak news!
Experiment with The Friday Night Project
Runs January 20th – February 10th
After a long week, everyone depends on Friday night to put the pep back in their step. Well, Toonspeak’s new Studio Session offers the very best in Friday night potential!
The Friday Night Project is the creation of Kevin, workshop leader extraordinaire! The Project will take all the excitement and drama of a Friday night and unleash its possibilities through alternative live performance. At the end of the 4-week project, participants will blow minds with their very own experimental performance. This Studio Session is perfect for young people ages 14 and up who have dramatic experience and want to explore beyond what they know about drama.
The Friday Night project will be held from 5-7pm at Springburn Nursery, Gourlay Street. As always, we want to make it easy and safe for you to attend, so we’ll be offering you a taxi to help you travel one way of your journey. For more information and to say you’re interested, please Facebook message the Toonspeak Staff, or call the office on 0141 552 1234 or just text Heather on 07547 801 652.
Session Dates:
Friday 20th January
Friday 27th January
Friday 3rd February
Performance on Friday 10th February
Prepare to be inSPIREd!
We’ll be reaching out in February and March
With support from the Big Lottery’s Our Place programme, Toonspeak Young People’s Theatre is about to start SPIRE (Skills Possibilities Inspiration Resilience Employment) - a really exciting 3 year project in Royston, North Glasgow running in partnership with Lifelink Youth.
This is a new project, aimed at increasing the chances of 14-20 year olds getting a job they want. The project will be individually tailored to the needs of the young people taking part. Young people will receive training in employability skills, they’ll take part in creative activities, find out more about a creative career and receive one-to-one life coaching. They will even have the chance to gain an Arts Award!
Toonspeak’s Artistic Director, Sarah Longfield, who is leading the project explains a bit more about SPIRE: “In the current climate, with youth unemployment at such a high level, projects like this are really needed to boost young people’s confidence, employability skills and knowledge of the job market. As well as gaining skills such as successful interview techniques, which will be useful to gain employment in any field, young people will get to explore career options in the creative industries that they may never have considered as an achievable option. They’ll learn more about the huge variety of creative jobs available across Glasgow by going on trips to various arts and media companies and even creating their own production. There will be all levels of involvement for young people to ensure we can cater for everyone. Some young people might just want to take part in the 6 week creative course that uses drama to identify existing skills and abilities that make the participants more employable, whereas some young people will go on to work for their bronze, silver or even gold Arts Award – which will really give them an edge when applying for a job.”
Soon, we’ll be confirming start dates and creating a fantastic new webpage specifically for SPIRE so keep an eye out. In the meantime, if you’d like more information about SPIRE, please contact Sarah Longfield on sarah@toonspeak.co.uk or 0141 552 0234.
Toonspeak is saying Hello, Glasgow!
Runs from now to end of March
It takes a flare for the dramatics to undertake Toonspeak’s newest Young Leaders’ project. Young Leaders are meeting and working with other amazing young people from across Glasgow; making links with organisations already doing great work and identifying ways we could perhaps work together in the future.
Our Hello, Glasgow! project involves our peer researchers (age 14-21) going to local areas and running a free drama workshops: spending time with youth groups, having fun, playing games and activities and finding out what drama opportunities the young people may want in their area.
If you’d like to be a young leader or, if you work with a group of young people age 10-25 who might be interested in arts provision, and if you have a space for us to run the workshop, we’d love to hear from you. If you’d like to find out more about the Hello, Glasgow! project or to book a free workshop, contact Heather Armstrong by emailing heather@toonspeak.co.uk or calling 0141 552 0234.
Arts Award participants will have results made official!
Takes place on Friday January 20th
Participants in the Arts Award October Week Project will have their individual portfolios officially confirmed on Friday, January 20th. During an intensive week, 16 young people worked hard during school holidays to achieve the Bronze Arts Award – a fancy Nationally recognized qualification. Participants only had seven days to watch and review a live theatre production; discover, research and present about their arts hero; share an artistic talent; and teach an arts skill. Now all their exhaustive work will pay off as the Big Guys from down South, the Official Moderators from Trinity Collage London, travel up to sunny Scotland to assess their projects.
Well done and good luck to: Andrew, Laura B, Mariam, David, Chloe, Lauren, Chantelle, Claire, Stephanie C, Georgina, Stephanie L, Gayle, Courtnay, Robert, Halima and Laura M. If you'd like to tell everyone about your experience and encourage others to gain their very own Arts Award qualification, email Lydia a post (lydia@toonspeak.co.uk) and we'll put your story up on the Members' Area.
Lots of opportunities for Spring Workshops!
Happening now!
To everyone’s delight and anticipation, this January all the Spring weekly theatre workshops began. If you haven’t gotten involved yet, there are still free spaces and all you have to do is show up! As usual, Toonspeak theatre workshops are open to all young people 11 and up and take place every week at the same place and time:
Monday 6-8pm Drumchapel Community Centre
Tuesday 6.30-8pm Petershill Leisure Centre, Springburn
Tuesday 6.30-8pm Bellcraig Community Centre, Summerston
Wednesday 6.30-8pm Balgrayhill Community Centre
Wednesday 7.30-9pm St Paul’s Church, Blackhill
Thursday 6.30-8pm Rainbow Hall, Royston
Harry Potter Inspired Play in a Day
Saturday 8th October 11am-5pm
Barmulloch Community Centre
After a Facebook vote, the theme for our play in a day has been chosen with Harry Potter being the clear favourite! Young people can sign up for a day of Harry Potter inspired fun and performing. There will be a special performance at 4.30pm on the day for family and friends. Free for young people aged 11-16 and living in North Glasgow. Contact Toonspeak on 0141 552 0234 to book your place.
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A FREE project for young people aged 11-18 from North Glasgow |
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Autumn Term of Theatre Workshops begins
The new term of Toonspeak Theatre Workshops has now begun at venues across North Glasgow. If you enjoy acting and creating performances and are aged 11+ then Theatre Workshops are for you! There are workshops in Royston, Springburn, Balgrayhill, Summerston and Blackhill. New members are always welcome and no experience is necessary, just come along to your nearest venue on the night or give us a call in the office for more information. Click here to find out more information about times, days and venues.
Workshop Leaders of the Future Toonspeak is delighted that we are now able to make our Workshop Leaders of the Future project a regular part of our activities for young people. Thanks to support from GHA and the Gannochy Trust, Toonspeak will be able to support a whole new generation of young people to learn how to run drama workshops and to deliver workshops to community groups across the North of Glasgow. Hurray! |
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Our Place - Roystonhill
Toonspeak is currently involved in the Big Lottery's Our Place programme in Roystonhill, which is aiming to develop and bring together the community. We are currently undertaking an intense period of consultation with young people across Royston, which includes working with young consultants and holding a local Fun Day to capture young people's honest opinions about their area. This valuable information will allow us to form the next stage of the potential project.
Theatre Trips
The Theatre Workshop groups have started their termly professional theatre visits. This term the groups have chosen to see shows such as Laurel and Hardy at the Citizen's Theatre and Bold Girls at the Ramshorn and each group will also have a follow up critical review session which will increase their understanding and appreciation of the performances. Our theatre trips and critical review sessions are supported by the D'Oyly Carte Charitable Trust and Children in Need.
Toonspeak Glasgow
Later on this year, as a result of funding received from the Big Lottery's Investing in Ideas fund, Toonspeak will begin an exciting research project to investigate the possibility of us extending our way of working to other areas of the city. If you would like further information about this project please contact Marissa McTeague, Operations Manager.
Photographs from GONE
A huge well done to the cast of GONE - who performed their excellent show to near capacity audiences at the RSAMD, supported by GHA. Photographs from the show are now up on the website - click here to see them!
Check out our Members Page for reviews, articles and pictures from the project...
Older Toonspeak news can be found on our archive news page
