Boundless Theatre have launched the Boundless Drama Club – an online membership-based creative community for 15–25-year-olds and early career creatives, with exclusive content, masterclasses, mentoring, work and funding opportunities alongside real time connections to the Boundless team and artists. The Boundless Drama Club will appeal to those interested in making theatre, offering a new and unprecedented level of support for early career theatre makers.
The Boundless Drama Club will introduce members to theatre making and creative skills; it offers a safe space for collaboration for young adults. Making the most of online learning, real time, digital experiences and creative commissions as well as financial support for work, the Boundless Drama Club will sit at the centre of the company’s artistic development and creative community work. The platform will be live and community-led, constantly evolving and developing based on the needs of its members, including in-time real world meet ups and resources to facilitate members setting up their own activities where they live.
At launch members can engage from home but eventually as part of the real-life clubs set up independently and around the UK. The Boundless Drama Club will show that theatre making can happen anywhere and at your own pace by taking part in self-guided creative challenges or making work that can then be shared around the country with other members in the network. Young adults will experience a new way of highly social theatre-making on their own terms, even in places with little or no existing theatre provision.
During the first year of the Boundless Drama Club, memberships will be offered free for young creatives to explore the platform as it develops and have a say in its direction and growth. After this point, individual memberships will cost £2 a month, with support for those who cannot afford to join. All memberships will be directly invested back into the Boundless Drama Club, paying for direct costs and to resource a creative fund.
Boundless Drama Club members will have access to exclusive guided creative challenges and resources; real-time online events and masterclasses; on demand content such as creative talks and articles; exclusive and early access to paid creative work, commissions and opportunities; networking with peers across the UK; and access to a creative fund for own work (paid for by membership fees). The first opportunity members have to apply for funding is the Boundless Accelerator fund, the scheme that was instrumental in developing Ryan Calais Cameron’s critically acclaimed For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When The Hue Gets Too Heavy.
On launch, Boundless will concentrate on growing its community and learning how best to support diverse creatives around the UK with masterclasses, real time creative events and mentoring. The format will develop to offer more support for real life clubs, enabling individual members to form collectives and pre-existing groups to benefit from dedicated resources and creative challenges that act as starting points for productions or more complex projects. This will all culminate annually in a Boundless Summit for members, a hybrid digital and in person event to showcase creative work, discuss future support for 15–25-year-old creatives, and celebrate the creative community. The summit will be led by young people, discussing the industry and what needs to change, looking at lessons and achievements from the previous year.
Rob Drummer, Artistic Director of Boundless Theatre, comments, The team have been working hard on planning and getting ready to launch the Boundless Drama Club over the past two years. We’ve learnt so much from our existing creative community around the UK and wanted to create new ways to share space with them and others. The Boundless Drama Club is intended to be an evolving response to the amazing creativity young people demonstrate daily and will connect all of our commissioning, creative development and skills and training work. In time we’re excited to see physical clubs appear all over the UK and to get more money and other resources directed exactly where they’re needed, to those starting out.
