Young Parents

Young parents was the first of the Borderlines groups I worked with after my meeting with Sue Moffat. This group works with youngsters who have children, or are about to become parents, there were also a few people taking child care course who were interested in seeing what work the theatre does.

This groups gives people the opportunity to have some freedom, and somewhere where they can socialise without the stigmas which come attached to being a young parent. The childcare is also organised by the theatre so they always have somewhere that their children can go.

I was only able to do one session with this group as I was already doing Home Ed every other week, and this unfortunately clashed, but on March 13th when there was no Home Ed I decided to go along to see what it was all about. 

This group were also working toward a show back about what is was like to be a young parent in today's society and how people perceive and judge young people. They started with a few games again, one interesting on which I have also done with other groups at the theatre is 'Prisoners' where everyone sits on a chair and has a person stand behind the, one chair is left empty and the person with that chair must try and get someone to sit in it by winking at the, whilst others must not let their 'prisoner' escape.

For the rest of the session  they worked on short scenes to do with things which may occur to young parents which people may judge. One participant explained how people look down upon her when her child cries in public. 

At the end they all read out some letters and poems which they had written for their children. It is easy to see why groups like these are classed as 'Hard to Reach' as they are more difficult to work with mainly because they do not have the confidence to put themselves out there which is why having something like this benefits them greatly.