The National Festival of Youth Theatres (NFYT) is the largest gathering of youth theatres in Ireland. The Festival, which happens in July every year, is a unique experience that provides young people with a fantastic opportunity to learn new skills, work with specialist facilitators, and get to know young people from youth theatres across the country.
In 2022, we were delighted to be back to a full live festival at Kilkenny College.
We are delighted to include 12 Youth Theatre Ireland affiliated youth theatres that participated in 4 days of workshops with specialist facilitators and social get-togethers from 4 to 8 July.
In the lead-up to the festival, a Partnership Project for all participating groups ran from April to June.
The Festival theme for NFYT 2022, as announced by the YTI Youth Board, was ‘Change’.
The 12 participating youth theatre affiliates are:
- Act Out Youth Theatre, Navan, Co.Meath
- Backstage Youth Theatre, Longford
- Co. Limerick Youth Theatre
- Co. Sligo Youth Theatre
- Dreamstuff Youth Theatre, Kilkenny
- Droichead Youth Theatre, Co.Louth
- Dublin Youth Theatre, Dublin
- Kildare Youth Theatre, Co. Kildare
- Mr. Sands Youth Theatre, Co. Wicklow
- Pod Youth Theatre, Co. Cavan
- Roscommon County Youth Theatre, Roscommon
- WACT Youth Theatre, Co. Wexford
How Much Does It Cost?
Youth Theatre Ireland believes that all young people should be able to participate in our programmes so there is no participation fee.
Youth theatres are responsible for providing two leaders to support young people’s participation in this online festival. If your youth theatre faces additional costs to pay leaders for their festival participation, we would encourage you to fundraise for these additional costs or include them within your youth theatre’s budget for the year. It’s important to Youth Theatre Ireland that any costs that are passed on to young people are not presented as a Festival participation fee charged by our organisation. Don’t worry! If your Expression of Interest is successful, we’ll provide you with some fundraising tips.
How Are Groups Selected?
We hope lots of affiliated youth theatres would like to take part in the Festival year! If we get more than 12 applications, then we will use the following criteria to select participating groups:
We will prioritise youth theatres that have not been to the festival before or have not been in a few years.
We will prioritise youth theatres that have the capacity to participate (e.g., can send 6 to 8 members, provide 2 leaders over the age of 21, complete administration for festival etc.)
We will try to ensure a regional spread of participating youth theatres.
We will try to ensure that there’s a mix of experience amongst the youth theatres and leaders at the festival.