A thousand brilliant things...

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I have had a brilliant few days…I spent Thursday and Friday at the Worlds Together Conference.  It was held at the Tate Modern and was organised by Tate, The RSC, The British Museum and The National Theatre…a pretty heady combination of Arts organisations…their ambition was to bring together artists and teachers and thinkers who are passionate about young people engaging with the arts…

What I did…

I listened to lots of people, who know a lot about what the arts can do and does to promote the development of young people into happy, creative, thoughtful, confident individuals…some of them were artists, some of them teachers, some neuroscientists, some anthropologists…
I took part in workshops with associate directors of The National Theatre and with the head of movement in the RSC which was nice…a little odd being a participant instead of leading, but you would have been proud of me…I tried hard and took part in discussions and everything…
I attended a symposium where people spoke really fast for 15 minutes on strange and interesting subjects and I concentrated on keeping up
I made some new friends
I tweeted quite a lot and then realised everything I wrote was being shown on a big screen…
I craftily got to see two brilliant pieces of theatre and was in the same room as two of my all time heroes…if you wanted to know if Cicely Berry and Julie Walters are the legends you’d want them to be…they are…

What I learnt…

Loads!

But apart from that there were 2 things that jumped out at me…
1.  We get so much right at YTYT, so much of what was being disseminated as ways to improve are things we just do…and have been just doing for a long, long time…
2.  The way we can improve is by taking nothing for granted, not a moment, not a best and worst, not a game, not a blog, not a discovery, not a word of text, not an experience, not a person, not an instinct…we have to appreciate , interrogate, analyse, enjoy, relish everything and have a lovely time doing it…then we need to reflect and in so doing it get twice the learning and twice the joy…

What has also been brilliant…

Being back at YTYT is brilliant…I had a ball at Gold…it was so lovely to be in the room with such a brilliant company…Miners rehearsals were productive, I’ve finally finished writing the Black Company’s Christmas play and I am positively giddy with anticipation about Sapphire tonight!

So yeah…go forth and live life to the full!

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