#LDF13: Workshop with Islington Community Theatre

Islington Community Theatre makes innovative, brave new theatre with and by young people from one of London’s most diverse and challenging boroughs. They’ve brought together 40 young people aged 11-25 and taken over the Pleasance Theatre for a week of experimentation, discussions and idea gathering.

Type Tasting joined the group in the morning for lively discussions on powerful topics including “We don’t know our neighbours”, “The world is much bigger than my London”, “Education doesn’t prepare us for life”, “How can you make everyone happy?” and “I am not someone who can ever be defined”.

At the end of the morning each participant wrote down three key words or ideas that they had taken away from the discussions. These were to be revisited later as the basis for the typographic explorations.

The Type Tasting workshop took place in the afternoon with half of the group. In the warm up exercise each participant created two versions of their initials. The first is the quiet, possibly shy and ‘good’ version of themselves they feel they project publicly to parents, teachers etc. The second is their exuberant alter ego, how they are with their friends and would like to world to see them.

For the main part of the workshop a lucky dip bag was passed around containing the words written down earlier, and each participant picked out a word at random. They each then recreated their word typographically so that the shapes of the letters conveyed the meaning of the word, incorporating mark making and collage materials.

By the end of the workshop there was a display of incredibly creative words which reflected some of the topics discussed in the morning. Each response was developed from an initial concept to a well crafted end result with a presentation to the rest of the group. It was an absolute pleasure for Type Tasting to join Islington Community Theatre for such an inspiring day.

Participants in the Type Tasting workshop: Corey P (‘Pressure’), Jack, Alisa, Bethany, Cheyanne Kong, Ruth Sesay (‘Freedom’), Dayin Ajiboye (‘Happiness’), Aaron Miller, Alexandra Callender (Never), Corinne McPartland (‘Dictatorship’), Sam Head (‘Society’), Ned Glasier and Sarah Stott.

The progress of the Islington Community Theatre’s week at the Pleasance Theatre can be followed through daily video updates on their Summer 2013 blog or via #ictexplosions on twitter.