As a longstanding associate for Coram Shakespeare Schools Foundation, I am delighted to be jumping into the role of Youth Board Manager. Our practice around youth led rehearsal rooms and shows is bold, radical and sector leading. The formation of a Youth Board gives us an opportunity to put our money where our mouth is and centre youth voice within the strategy and operations of the organisation too.

We have a team of 8 brilliant young people from across the UK including some who have done the Festival with us multiple times, some who met us through our national competition, What You Will, and some who have never worked with our charity before.

In my role as Youth Board Manager, I have been thinking carefully about how we curate our engagement with these young people to ensure that we are driven by action and direct change. It is important that the Youth Board is enabled to make tangible impact and it doesn't just pay lip service to youth voice. With this in mind, I began by surveying all Coram Shakespeare Schools Foundation staff to find out how young people could influence their area of work and from this created the following three strands of work that has become the format of our bimonthly meetings.

1. Coram Shakespeare Schools Foundation Question Time
Quick fire questions to and from the Coram Shakespeare Schools Foundation team so that we are in more constant dialogue with young people.

2. Creative Challenges
A deep dive into a specific area of Coram Shakespeare Schools Foundation's work that the Youth Board are asked to help creatively problem solve, ideas generate or question to develop our work and centre young people’s ideas.

3. Subgroups
Two groups that will work closely on areas of current deeper thinking and development within Coram Shakespeare Schools Foundation that the Youth Board have selected to be part of: Arts, Wellbeing and the not-so-soft skills and Gender, Queerness and Shakespeare

We've already had our first meeting together where we wrangled with the question ‘Should we still be focusing on Shakespeare?’ and put our best The Apprentice hats on to dream up a series of Festival merchandise. You will hear more from them and our plans in upcoming blogs. If you'd like to know more, contact me on jordana.golbourn@coramshakespeareschools.org.uk.