Article appeared in The Philip Lawrence Awards Magazine 2005 

“Being a part of Jackass has opened new doors for me and is paving a way for the future. I’m learning a lot from these experiences - making music and films. Working with 18 and 19 year olds as well as those my age - and they’ll help me when I’m older. It’s also great to be able to help children and young people challenge their preconceptions.’’ Tom Burton, 15

Our Very Useful Grant
We wanted to share our excitement with you – our Jackass Youth Theatre award-winning project, The Ramayana, has been rolling out cross the county and beyond. An Arts Council of England grant of £40,000 enabled us to take the project to a further nine locations. The Jackass Youth Theatre, set up by Jack Drum Arts in rural County Durham, was one of the winners in last year’s Philip Lawrence Awards. We grew in response to the need of young people in the area to engage in positive, fun activities, as there’s not always a lot for them to do outside of school.

Fifty local children and young people have been participating in our Ramayana project – retelling a Hindu epic in a spectacular way through Bollywood style dance, music, fantastic costumes, puppets, masks and body art. The project helps to counter racial stereotypes, and encourages young people to engage with other cultures and understand more about their own. We can’t tell you what an amazing difference it has made to our work to be able to say ‘We won a Philip Lawrence Award’! We tried to get a grant from the Arts Council last year for the initial project but they turned us down. Winning the award has given us the status and credibility to fly with this and it’s simply wonderful. “The most rewarding part of the project was bringing many of the isolated youngsters into contact with the junior jackass.” Laura Emerson, 19 “Working with Jackass has given me a lot of self-confidence, self esteem and ambition…as well as opportunities to do interesting training.” Joseph Robson, 18.

Inspiring Performances
We delivered one of the projects during Whit week in the district of Easington, one of the most deprived wards in the entire country. We also performed the show outdoors at a nearby National Nature Reserve (Castle Eden Dene) – although the young people live right on the doorstep, most of them had never even been there. Everyone had a fantastic time and the feedback was all-round positive. We next performed the show in the grounds of County Hall in Durham as the closing event for a local education authority (LEA) Equality & Diversity Conference. The LEA were so impressed that they ran a feature on our project in their newsletter. Another amazing experience was our time spent at Epping Forest for the Big Youth Theatre Festival in July. Around 800 young people from all over the country gathered at the festival for four days of camping and fun theatre stuff. Our young performers presented their wacky version of Creation stories in an outdoor amphitheatre.

School Participation
We have performed at many other venues including in the grounds of the beautiful Bowes Museum and at many schools – including Bishop Auckland College, as part of an Asian Arts day with dance, drumming, mehindi, rangoli, shikisha and Asian cookery. Recently, Jackass Youth Theatre won the NE Regional Millennium Volunteers of the Year award and a Co. Durham Partnerships Against Crime Shrievalty Award – largely because of the Ramayana. Wolsingham School, our partner school, has been nominated for a special ‘Impetus’ award for their involvement. Being award winners in the PLA is having such a positive knock-on effect in so many areas of our lives, as well as encouraging us to pass on our skills and experience to others. Our young performers have been teaching their theatre skills to their peers, who are then performing for other children in turn.

Cultural Diversity
The latest exciting development for Jackass is our participation in an international youth theatre project,
Contacting the World. We are one of six UK theatre companies chosen to work with six international companies (from Rwanda, South Africa, the Philippines, India, Brazil and New Zealand). Jackass has been twinned with a company in New Zealand and we will be creating a brand new piece of theatre.

For more information on the Jackass Youth Theatre, visit www.jackdrum.co.uk/