The Millennium Forum yesterday announced details of the brand new programme for its upcoming InterAct Youth Arts Festival which takes place this July. The award-winning festival will, this year, extend across numerous locations in the North West region with workshops and events being held in Newbuildings Community Centre, Culmore Community Centre, Lincoln Courts Youth & Community Association, St Mary’s Youth Centre, Learning Pool and, of course, the Millennium Forum. And it’s all FREE!
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 So our festival would not be able to happen without our youth forum.
00:07 So our festival and youth events are spearheaded by the youth forum who inform us what young
00:12 people want and need to access the arts in our city.
00:15 They have also decorated the room today which is absolutely gorgeous don't you think?
00:20 I would like to pass over to Shannon, one of our youth forum members who has now been
00:23 hired to be our festival assistant this year.
00:28 We love being a part of the youth forum and the opportunities we are given as part of
00:37 the youth forum outside of Interact is amazing.
00:40 With projects like Happy Stage which is an arts and mental health project, musical theatre
00:45 open night nights and all the events we assist throughout the year.
00:48 I have been a member of the youth forum since 2018 and love coming to all the events all
00:53 year round.
00:54 What is great for me personally this year is that I have been hired as the festival
00:58 assistant which has led me on for my years in the youth forum and which will also help
01:01 me greatly with my teaching degree which I am currently doing in St. Mary's University.
01:05 We are delighted to mentor and be part of Interact 2024.
01:08 We hope you are as excited as us for the festival workshops this year.
01:12 [Applause]
01:15 Hi I'm Mags Anderson, I am the education officer here at the Millennium Forum.
01:19 Can you give us a little update on the youth forum, could you give us a quick rundown on
01:22 some of the popular things?
01:24 So our Interact Youth Arts Festival is always popular.
01:28 Our workshops that would be extremely popular would be the musical theatre, the dance, the
01:32 special effects makeup, the song writing and the singing.
01:36 And then this year we have got animation and we have got multiple styles of dance as well
01:41 so it's not just hip hop or street dance.
01:43 So we've got a twist on an Irish dance as well coming in and then we have song writing
01:48 too so the new artists are able to explore their own creativity.
01:52 How does it feel to give young people a platform where they can express themselves in arts
01:57 and learning?
01:57 It feels amazing because when I was growing up here in Derry there wasn't much here bar
02:01 the Rialto and I had to go to England for my training so it's great to be able to offer
02:06 all of this for free and to see the outcome today for the young people that were here
02:10 last year are so eager to get back into it.
02:13 Now we've launched it a month earlier this year just because of the influx of information
02:18 needed from people so we thought right let's go a bit earlier this year so we're opening
02:22 it a month early and we've got four weeks to book.
02:25 How can you influence young people to get involved in something like this instead of
02:29 sitting by yourself?
02:30 I find the youth forum, our youth forum are brilliant so they would share it along with
02:34 their friends and they would share it through TikTok and anything that's trending at the
02:38 minute.
02:39 We also have the Happy Stage Project which is for young people's mental health so we've
02:43 found lots of young people from that has come as well.
02:46 It's just come and enjoy it and everybody's in the same boat and they're just here to
02:50 have fun and make stuff and enjoy themselves and create a piece of theatre or a piece of
02:55 dance or a piece of art at the end of it and just celebrate your own creativity.
02:59 Oh I'm Shannon and I'm a part of the youth forum and I'm also principal assistant for
03:03 this year's Interact.
03:04 Can you tell me what it means to be a born sufferer in the youth forum?
03:08 It's kind of like a privilege, like it's really nice to be able to contribute towards
03:12 the arts for young people, especially like growing up in Derry and being a part of it
03:16 and being able to share with other people like what we want for our community is great
03:19 to be able to give that to everybody else.
03:21 I am Deirdre, I'm shortly from Derry, we're two girls Abigail and Amelia who attend the
03:27 Happy Stage.
03:27 And what do you think of festivals like these that try to get children involved in work?
03:32 Amazing, just I think it gets them interacting with our children, like my children even get
03:36 out of their comfort zone, it's amazing just even getting out of the house during the summer
03:40 as they're stuck on their social media apps and whatnot, so it's getting them away from
03:44 the norm.
03:44 Do you want workshops of your own children to attend, like what do you think?
03:48 They did the Happy Stage, it's all about just acting and learning different stage techniques
03:56 and just basically confidence, you know coming out of themselves, getting more, better communication
04:01 skills maybe.