International Youth Day: LHT Unwrapped
Every year on 12 August, the UN’s International Youth Day celebrates young people and raises awareness of issues that matter to them. This year, we are taking a moment to highlight one of our recent initiatives for children and young people – our school holiday activities.
Written by Sophie Ashley
LHT Unwrapped
In 2023, Leeds Heritage Theatres launched a regular strand of school holiday activities to provide an outlet for creativity outside of term time and reach more young people with our Learning and Engagement work. Initially, the idea was to offer drama workshops based in our Studio at Leeds Grand Theatre, so we handily called this ‘The Grand Academy’.
Over the years, we steadily built on the holiday activities and joined up the offer across our venues. We have introduced children to creative endeavors beyond drama, from stop motion animation and foley art to scenic painting, circus skills and costume design. To better reflect this variety, we parceled our activity up under a new name: LHT Unwrapped.
Young people taking part in an animation workshop at the Picture House. Credit Daniel Johnson
Wonderland Awaits
In time for LeedsBID’s city-wide celebration, Wonderland Awaits, the Learning team took inspiration from the children’s classic Alice in Wonderland for this summer’s holiday activities.
Last month, some of the best film adaptations of Lewis Carroll’s stories were screened at Hyde Park Picture House to start immersing audiences in Wonderland.
Our ever-popular Drama Days at Leeds Grand Theatre closely followed the tale of Alice in Wonderland, too, with three days of imaginative activities for three different age groups this August. We invited our youngest visitors, ages 6 – 8, to spend the day preparing for the Mad Hatter’s tea party.
We started the day as we often do, with on-your-feet drama games to get to know each other and get the creative juices flowing. Then, we rotated between activities to prepare for our tea party: decorating biscuits, creating our own mad hats and designing a placemat each for the party table.
Check out the video to see our friends from LeedsBID popping down to the Grand with Hatter and the Hare to surprise everyone at our tea party.
Thank you to the Wonderland Awaits team for bringing the characters we had read about together to life!
This summer
Our Drama Day for 9 – 11-year-olds followed a similar format, but with even more time to explore and raid the theatre’s costume stores for outfits fit for Wonderland. As well as Hatter and the Hare, some wonderful renditions of the Queen of Hearts, Alice and the Queen’s guards joined the tea party table. Together, we devised short pieces of drama inspired by the beloved characters and shared these with each other.
With our oldest group of the week, the young people aged 12 – 14, we instead dedicated time to script work using an abridged version of Alice in Wonderland, splitting off into groups to perform the tale scene by scene. The costume rail proved just as popular (especially for selfie opportunities), and we also took up the chance to work with our industry-grade lighting rig in small groups.
Throughout the day, the young people explored the full gamut of costume, sound, lighting and props to flesh out their scenes and explore everything that supports the work of actors in a professional theatre.
The Mad Hatter's tea party at LHT Unwrapped. Credit Sophie Ashley
Trying on costumes at LHT Unwrapped. Credit Sophie Ashley
Sharing drama work at LHT Unwrapped. Credit Sophie Ashley
Dress-up as the Queen of Hearts at LHT Unwrapped. Credit Sophie Ashley
Our ambition for LHT Unwrapped
Our ambition for LHT Unwrapped has always been to create safe spaces for children to explore their own creativity in a fun, relaxed and accessible way. Many of us may have memories of being sent off to clubs during the holidays, making new friends (even if just for the day), and trying new things to expand the horizons of our little worlds.
We are passionate about making our venues welcoming places and sites of these kinds of fond memories for communities across Leeds. Whether that be sparking the imagination of an 8-year-old, providing a teenager some respite from the Year 10 curriculum, or helping a local mum with Monday childcare, we are keen to play our part in enriching the school holidays.
Participants of LHT Unwrapped at Hyde Park Picture House. Credit Aaron Cawood
Leeds Heritage Theatres Engagement Fund
Every year, we work with young people across the city – in schools, youth groups and other sessions – to help them build skills, confidence and pride through our creative learning and engagement programme. All donations to this fund will help us to continue our work and reach more people across the region.
