After more than six years of research through the TEEN and TEEN Ambassadors Across Europe co-operation projects, the Project Manager, Cristina Cazzola, is ready to share and discuss some of the most significant achievements of this amazing journey with an online participatory workshop. The TEEN Ambassadors Across Europe project follows on from an earlier programme of work which developed a methodology aimed at developing best practice teenage audience development strategies based on positive experiences and practices at local and national levels. Founded by Programme Managers working in the Theatre for Young Audiences sector, the earlier project worked to identify the most suitable kinds of Theatre performances, as well as the most effective engagement techniques for the Teenage age group. This previous work established local collectives of Teenagers called ‘TEEN Action Groups’. Completed activities included experimenting with tools of Theatre criticism and bringing together Programme Managers, Creative Professionals & Artists, and Teenage audience members in TEEN Kitchen Table Meetings. Trialling, mapping, and translating these successful local practices into a methodology that can be applied across Europe, this earlier project marked the beginning of a permanent network structure supporting local arts organisations to engage Teenagers in their Theatre programming. When the TEEN Ambassadors Across Europe project was launched in December 2018, it sought to develop the Teenage audience development methodology further by testing the established methodology, alongside new approaches, across several existing partner countries, as well as to experiment with disseminating the toolbox of methods to new, associated partners. Fundamentally, it also seeks to answer whether it is possible for European Theatre festivals targeting Teenagers to be programmed and produced by a team of Co-programmers, that includes Teenagers themselves. It is exploring how effective such tools are in different national contexts; is focusing on embedding digital strategies into the methodology; is seeking to create a dialogue between Teenagers and School Teachers around cultural experiences; and is working to empower Creative Professionals to work closer together with Teenagers. The project partners believe that the challenge is not to simply increase the number of Teenagers in our Theatre audiences but, more significantly, to deepen the quality of Teenagers’ engagement and instil in them the same enthusiasm for the theatrical art form as that which motivates those who make Theatre.

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