Budding young talent filled the stalls of the Gaiety Theatre on Friday 1 July 2022 as participants in Scotland’s National Festival of Youth Theatre (NFYT) descended on Ayr to mark the start of a wonderful camping weekend of workshops and performances.

As the largest gathering of youth theatres in the UK, NFYT enables young people to celebrate their shared passion for theatre, offering them the opportunity to develop as artists, audience members, and creative thinkers. With an emphasis on inclusion, education and collaboration, the festival teaches valuable life skills, and provides extraordinary new experiences to youth theatre groups from across Scotland. We were delighted to be joined in 2022 by…

• At The Root Theatre Company
• Ayr Gaiety Young Company and Youth Theatre
• Dundee Rep Young Company
• Firefly Arts
• Glasgow Acting Academy
• Mix Up Theatre
• Shazam Theatre Company
• Strange Town
• Theatre Alliance
• Toonspeak Young People’s Theatre
• Zoom Youth Theatre

As part of the festival, many participating youth theatres packed up a show as well as their tents and suncream, and brought it by road and rail to the stage at the Gaiety Theatre. For the 2022 festival, we featured exciting new work by…

• Dundee Rep Young Company
• Ayr Gaiety Young Company and Youth Theatre
• Glasgow Acting Academy
• Firefly Arts
• Zoom Youth Theatre
• Theatre Alliance

We also hosted a site-responsive scratch performance by some of our participants in the beautiful Grain Exchange, and screened a short film by Mix Up Theatre in Ayr Town Hall.

After six successful years in Glenrothes, NFYT first pitched their tents in Ayr back in 2017, enjoying two successful biennial festivals in the town before being interrupted by the pandemic. We were delighted to bring the event back to Ayr for the third time in 2022.

NFYT 2022 was produced by Youth Theatre Arts Scotland in partnership with Ayr Gaiety Partnership and South Ayrshire Council. We gratefully acknowledge core funding from Creative Scotland, as well as additional funding for this event kindly provided by St James’s Place Charitable Foundation, the Scottish Children’s Lottery, and William Grant & Sons Local Giving Scheme. A huge thanks to our event funders and partners!

Information Session

Members of the Youth Theatre Arts Scotland team hosted information sessions on to answer questions about NFYT 2022, what’s involved in it, and how to bring a group. The information sessions were for youth theatre leaders who are interested in offering NFYT as an opportunity for their group, whether you want to perform a show, attend without a show, or visit for one day.

While the information in the video is specific to the 2022 version of NFYT, it will still give leaders an idea of what’s involved if they are interested in offering it to their young people in future years, so we will leave it here for now!