Producing Performance in Youthful Ways

Performance organizations often program youth productions without involving young people in the decision-making processes. These organizations may justify their lack of youth engagement by articulating that developing youth leadership in meaningful, long-term, and actionable ways is not maintainable.

On 7 July 2023, our Youth Producer Program (YPP) team—comprising Bailee Fisher, Mathew Cammack, Antionne Showels II, Priya Thoppil, a fifth youth producer, and adult mentor Deen Rawlins-Harris—began to challenge this notion. We believe that youth art programs that focus on performance do empower young people by incorporating their stories, ideas, and talents into creative performances. YPP asked the question: “Why not involve youth in art administration work as well?”

By holding a shared belief in youth administrative leadership throughout the YPP internship, we discovered youthful ways to produce live performances intergenerationally.

The YPP internship model, imagined by our adult mentor, satisfied the partial requirements of Deen’s MFA degree at UT Austin. However, our entire team’s participation in the project inspired new life and longevity that we only could imagine together. YPP was intended to be a five-week internship program, funded by Travis County Summer Youth Employment Program, introducing youth interns to creative producing by envisioning and planning a community art festival for teens in Austin. There was no official commitment to making the festival a reality. With the support of community partners and our yearlong commitment to the project, we turned our imagined event into a well-attended public music and art festival by and for Austin teens.

Fusebox, an Austin-based performance art nonprofit, is committed to exploring the possibilities of live performance, as evident in their excitement to share production resources as YPP’s fiscal sponsor. Although we were uncertain at times, Fusebox recognized the importance of involving youth in festival production, particularly in Austin, Texas. Austin is home to South by Southwest (SXSW), Afrotech, Austin City Limits, Fusebox Festival, and many other local community festivals we researched. Festivals are an integral part of Austin’s socioeconomic and artistic landscape, but no festival in Austin specifically targets teenagers. Fusebox, however, welcomed the opportunity to produce programming centered around teens and led by teens.

By centering meaningful intergenerational leadership opportunities, we discarded an adult-led summer internship model in exchange for a memorable and transformational experience that prioritized youth entrepreneurship.

Adults possibly assign summer job placements with the assumption that youth are uninterested in completing complex administrative tasks. Consequently, youth job duties can be tedious and avoid opportunities for skill development—this is primarily a result of a society that views youth as passive and naive participants in their own experiences. When adult mentors intentionally design transformative work-based learning duties in collaboration with youth interns, they create a workspace that values their interns’ unique skills and provides opportunity for hands-on development through meaningful and reciprocal intergenerational mentorship. This approach requires employers to adapt their typical product-oriented systems in exchange for process-oriented workflows that transform organizational culture. By centering meaningful intergenerational leadership opportunities, we discarded an adult-led summer internship model in exchange for a memorable and transformational experience that prioritized youth entrepreneurship.

During that summer, we developed mission, vision, and value statements collaboratively by utilizing word cloud activities to find the commonality in our individual goals and desires for our festival. We conducted market research by meeting with other youth from Creative Action’s Changing Lives Theatre Ensemble and Performing Justice Project’s Courageous Cadence in Austin to develop personal understandings of what youth were looking for in a youth-centric art and culture public event. We facilitated an interactive presentation to pitch our festival to public officials, community members, and our families. Our work elicited mixed responses from grant panels, highlighting the issue of youth being systematically underfunded and under-resourced as community members. Reflecting on our beginnings, it is impressive that our group of youth producers created Revive Youth Festival: Teen Bands Showcase, a live music festival for teens. Additionally, our work shifted understandings of what it means to be producers and leaders by creating a process for producing that remained intentionally youthful.

By working alongside one another in our intergenerational and transformational learning community, we identified six components that live event producers could implement to facilitate more youthful production experiences. Together we determined a youthful producing practice requires youth leadership and decision-making, utilizes work-life balance practices, prioritizes inclusivity and accessibility planning, facilitates opportunities to connect with other youth, reveals budgetary realities through transparent conversations about money, and emphasizes the importance of play.

The Revive Youth Festival occurred on 13 April 2024 with funding and resources from the National Performance Network, the University of Texas at Austin’s Department of Theatre and Dance, Texas Performing Arts, and Brown Boy Productions. The event featured music from M.U.G,No Tuition, Looseknit, and Thunderous Bang; programming from local youth community organizations; and youth artisans and vendors from Austin. With more than 150 audience members in attendance, the event marked the culmination of the yearlong internship.

Last August, we met to debrief our experience planning the festival. What follows is an edited excerpt from that conversation.

Deen Rawlins-Harris: The first question I have is, how did we create the festival during the summer of 2023 and spring 2024? Let's start with the summer.

Antionne Showels II: We started coming up with the festival last summer at the Vortex. We didn't know what Fusebox was, but you told us we were making a teen youth festival. Every day, little by little, we came up with plans for the festival, thinking about what kids would like. It didn’t end up being what we had thought it would be, but it still ended up being very good at the end. But I felt like just us being kids and our mindset, we had open minds about everything, and that’s how we came up with the festival.

Priya Thoppil: We started by making lists of different categories like food, sports, art, and activities. Then, we decided along with the budget what we could realistically have at the festival We spent a lot of time discussing and voting on what would be best and supported by our budget. We each had a task of researching equipment and other needs, filling in the budget spreadsheet. We found some funding, although not as much as we wanted, but we ended up not spending all of it.

Bailee Fisher: We had to figure out if it was accessible and had everything needed for everybody and that we could afford it. 

Deen: Yes. Our budget was tough to come up with. Do you remember some of the activities we did to create the budget or come up with ideas for the events?

Antionne: You gave us index cards, and we wrote down ideas. After we got done, we met up, read them aloud, and put them into categories. That’s how we came up with all our ideas. We went into our own spaces, researched the main stuff we wanted, met back, and told you how much it cost. We just went on from there.

Deen: I remember pretending to be the budget and having a conversation with you all. Did that activity help you comprehend the budget differently?

Bailee: I remember some of it. We got to ask you questions and make it less serious. Still, it was hard to figure out and stick to the budget while having things we wanted at the festival.

Deen: How did you figure out how to make it less complicated?

Antionne: By researching the things you want. And finding different costs for things.

Deen: We had to research people and organizations involved. Who were some important people or organizations involved in this process, and how did they help you create the festival?

Antionne: The University of Texas at Austin and Fusebox were a big part because they were our source of funding.

Priya: I don’t specifically remember their names, but some organizations did exercises with us. There was a group of teenagers running a school program. They helped us navigate the process of the festival.

Deen: That was Creative Action Youth Theater Ensemble. They helped us think about how to facilitate presentations in an engaging way. Do you remember Jamie Sullivan, the occupational therapist, who came in with the accessibility work?

Bailee: Yeah. He helped us with creating a quiet zone for people.

Priya: Oh yeah, he played a game with us too. We did the guided walks and talked about what it felt like to have someone support you. 

Antionne: That helped us think about having volunteers and hosting people. Making sure people felt included.

Deen: How did the games help us work through the process?

Antionne: They took our mind off things, making it easier to work.

Deen: Do you remember when we had days off to rest and chill? How was that?

Priya: It helped us to know that we could rest. The rest helped us brainstorm what we wanted at the festival.

Bailee: With my computer at home, it helped me find materials and locations for the festival.

Antionne: It was easier to do research at home, definitely. 

Deen: What were the fun parts of this job for you?

Antionne: Playing games.

Priya: It was a fun environment, which helped us be open about what to include in the festival.

Deen: Were there any parts of the job that were hard?

Antionne: It was pretty balanced because you gave us time to decompress while still doing work.

Deen: Priya, Bailee, do you agree?

Bailee and Priya: Yes.

Deen: Did you learn about yourself while working on this project?

Antionne: I learned about work-life balance and what I want in a job.

Bailee: I learned that if something was hard, I would switch to something else, like we did with research.

Priya: I learned how to budget and plan, which were new skills for me.

Deen: Did you learn you were good at any of those skills?

Priya: I liked budgeting.

Antionne: We got better at research.

Deen: Can you describe some of the research we did?

Bailee: Researching buildings. I didn’t know about any of them until I researched them.

Antionne: I didn’t know you needed to adhere to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) for a building, making it accessible for everybody.

Deen: How was presenting the festival to your community, family, and random people?

Bailee: It was cool because everyone thought it was a great idea and was willing to help.

Antionne: Presenting gave me a better look at adult life. We practiced enough that it took a big weight off our chest.

Priya: It was a big project, so it was good to present it and know we created something monumental.

Deen: What was it like having to come up with mission statements and values?

Antionne: Preparation helped. When adults asked questions, we already knew the answers.

Deen: How was it different working with adults in this way compared to other experiences?

Antionne: Everyone was friendly, making it easier to do anything.

Bailee: It was easier because if I needed help, I could ask without waiting or raising my hand.

Priya: It was different because they’re not our age, but they helped us figure out things like budgeting and accessibility.

Deen: Did you have to stand up for your ideas or compromise with adults?

Priya: Maybe accessibility was a big one, making sure everything was accounted for. 

Deen: Yeah, I remember trying to get American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation and working through that and being told we could not get it unless someone requested the service directly. Were there other times you had to stand up for ideas or felt listened to?

Bailee: Changing locations to ensure accessibility was appropriate. We didn’t get to be in the space we wanted at the end. And our new site had accessibility issues, but we shifted to make sure all our activities happened in spaces that were accessible to everyone.

Deen: Speaking of shifts, how did you notice your work shift in the spring when we were actually building the festival compared to the summer when we were planning and proposing our initial ideas?

Bailee: In the summer, we were in person a lot. In the spring, we were on Zoom, making it easier.

Antionne: I think we did all the hard work in the summer. Coming up with mission statements, learning about what a festival and producing was. We had to work every day and really get a solid plan together for our event. There were lots of details. In the spring, we were just researching and reaching out to people to come and be in it.

Priya: We built the base of the festival in the summer and completed our work on it in the spring. Especially finding the artists. That got me a little worried. Reaching out and communicating with bands was the hardest part because of time constraints

*****

Deen: How did planning this festival help you understand other teens in your community?

Priya: Working with youth groups gave us a view of what teens in different communities liked, helping us learn how to be inclusive. I was introduced to new groups and people, which was interesting.

Deen: Has your opinion on live art changed?

Priya: We had to learn how to produce a festival, controlling logistics and timing. Behind-the-scenes stuff was new for me. And lots goes into making sure everything works well.

Deen: Do you see producing as making art or something different?

Antionne: It’s not like making art. But we were producers and supporting artists. We were like the audience, too.

Bailee: Producing is creating something to help others do the same later.

Deen: What can adults learn from youth about producing a festival?

Bailee: Doing research even when you think you know the thing. Looking up what’s needed and seeing if it’s actually accessible for everyone.

Priya: Inclusivity is important, considering young people's views.

Deen: Why is it important to include young people in leadership roles?

Antionne: If adults are planning an event for kids, having a kid’s perspective makes it easier to decide. We know what we want.

Priya: It ensures everyone, regardless of their age, is heard and accounted for, promoting inclusivity.

Deen: How did creating this festival help create an inclusive world?

Bailee: We ensured our voices were heard, making the festival inclusive.

*****
Youth are capable of providing invaluable insights to arts administrators’ daily decisions. Youth leadership is adaptable and responds quickly to the challenges of collaborative work; makes complex choices that recognize community interest, time, and space constraints; and understands budget limitations. Youth do not make these decisions lightly either; after conducting thorough research, youth confidently execute tasks to benefit their well-being, the artists they work with, and their audience members. Youth artistic leadership programs should introduce youth to the language, processes, and systems commonly used in live performance producing. Once the youth demonstrate an understanding of these administrative tasks, it is crucial to provide them space to innovate production models. 

We think play is important to a producer’s job, serving as a reminder to create the same enjoyable experiences for audiences and performers.

As the YPP, we wanted the Revive Youth Festival to be an enjoyable experience for teens, so we made sure our own production process was fun. We played so many games with one another during this internship. Playing games reminded us of our mission to create a fun experience for youth in Austin. Secondary to being paid well, playing games made it easy to commit to working on the festival for a year. Adult producers often deprioritize rest and play in favor of efficiency, urgency, expansion, or a myriad of other concerns that may lead to unsustainable working conditions. We think play is important to a producer’s job, serving as a reminder to create the same enjoyable experiences for audiences and performers.

Youth can evaluate and make research-based programmatic decisions, just as production companies do daily, if adults provide youth with the necessary resources. The live event field should recognize the benefits of intergenerational approaches to producing performances. While a youthful approach is not the only way to produce live events, working with youth as producers makes it easier to engage younger audiences. It's time to turn to youth leadership to help address the organizational sustainability and accessibility crisis affecting our field. In doing so, festivals and performance spaces can create places for youth to feel welcomed and wanted.