This vertical video short focuses on the workshop facilitators’ skill in creating a safe space in which the kids felt confident to express themselves creatively.

English Theatre Düsseldorf (ETD) brings professional English-language theatre and community theatre workshops to international audiences.

We made these videos to promote their Between the Lines poetry and spoken word workshops, in which teenagers from local schools took part in four days of collaborative activities and writing.

The goal of the videos was to show what an important personal development experience the workshops had been for the kids, empowering them to express themselves creatively with confidence, increasing their self-understanding through personal exploration and reflection and encouraging them to collaborate openly with their peers.

We also wanted to show that underlying that experience was the workshop facilitators’ skill in creating a safe space in which the students felt comfortable to open up and share their stories with each other.

Naturally the shoot was squeezed into a hectic schedule, so I took a simple and flexible approach. It was impossible to know beforehand who’d be willing to appear on camera or to prepare the interviewees. So I brought a short list of simple questions to get them talking and give them the space for the key themes to emerge.

ETD will use the videos extensively as a website testimonial, for social media promotion and to attract funding for future projects. ETD is a long-term client with various projects in the pipeline.