This month’s guest blog is from a new initiative called EMERGE(NCY) PARTY which launches at the beginning of May.  
 
The initiative is aimed at asking young people how the world could change for the better after the Covid-19 crisis.  
 
It gives young people a voice in the crisis, to protest, to share and to celebrate – an opportunity to imagine and explore a better future through art. 

EMERGE(NCY) PARTY 

The project is open to young people aged between 12 and 18, who are interested in making art/theatre/music/film, community organising, forms of protest or simply have something to say in the midst of the current crisis. 
 
EMERGE(NCY) PARTY part 1 will take place over 15 weeks from the beginning of May to the beginning of August with weekly online Zoom sessions for participants. These sessions will take the form of discussion and making workshops, including a check-in about how participants are individually coping, a discussion around ideas for positive community action and a practical workshop on a particular art form leading to that week’s creative assignment. 
 
Themes of these workshops will include: 
 
Personal Storytelling, Creative Limitations, Interviewing Techniques, Portraiture, Art as a Form of Protest, and Community Art 
 
Creative assignments will include: 
 
Photography, soundscapes and field recordings, making and editing short films, writing, theatre making, song writing, painting and drawing 
 
The participants will be offered a creative mentor in an area of the arts that interests them, in order to help guide their creative responses to the tasks. 
 
The young artist’s responses to assignments will be hosted online, at WWW.EMERGENCYPARTY.ORG which will archive their collective journeys. 
Part 2 of EMERGE(NCY) PARTY will move offline once social distancing policies are being relaxed. This will offer young people the opportunity to organise celebratory community gatherings where they will showcase or exhibit their creative journeys. These events will be a chance for the young people to bring their local communities together again after isolation, reflect on their experiences and share their ideas for positive local initiatives moving forwards. They may involve, for example, a shared meal, hosted talks, performed readings or songs. 
 
Sixty-five young people are already participating all over the country from Aberdeen to Coventry to London and the project hopes to engage 60 more in the coming two weeks. 
 
The project is FREE to sign up to. There is a suggested donation for those who can afford it. All donations will go towards the running of the project and all profits will be donated to YOUNGMiNDS: https://youngminds.org.uk/ 

The Team 

The team behind EMERGE(NCY) PARTY are Bethany West and Barney McElholm (Assistant Directors, Shakespeare’s Globe 2019), Emma Stones (NZ Fringe & RA Lates) and Jude Shapiro (British Red Cross). The project was inspired by Rebecca Solnit’s impassioned challenge to the social meaning of disasters in her book, A Paradise Built in Hell, which explores the social meaning of disasters. 
"The current crisis has radically and abruptly flipped the world for young people. They are being asked to make sense of cancelled exams, to accept that their teachers’ opinions will determine their futures, to cope with being separated from peer groups at a time in life when this is so fundamental, to live in close proximity to family at an age when independence is so important. And this is all a mere backdrop to the terrifying global battle between life and death; where their parents’ fears for their livelihoods and vulnerable relatives might, understandably, take precedence over the teenager’s stresses and anxieties" 
 
Bethany West, Co-Director EMERGE(NCY) PARTY 
 
"For too long our society has been built around supporting the voices of an aging voting population; making multigenerational decisions on Europe, the climate crisis and state debt. Triple lock pension increases holding hands with the cancellation of free school dinners. Young people have either been excluded from political discourse or worse, vilified by our leaders. We are giving young people a voice. It will be a voice of intelligence, ingenuity and hope." 
 
Barney McElholm, Co-Director EMERGE(NCY) PARTY 
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