A chance to shine

10,864

Young People

What You Will

To mark the 400th anniversary of the publication of Shakespeare’s First Folio in 2023, we launched a new national creative competition inviting children and young people aged five to 25 to take a fresh look at Shakespeare’s plays and to create a new speech for one of the characters.

Supported by Cambridge Schools Shakespeare (part of Cambridge University Press), What You Will challenges children and young people to create a new, unspoken speech from any Shakespeare character, providing an opportunity to share new perspectives and make the characters their own.

Winning entries will be showcased in a gala performance event at the Criterion Theatre in Piccadilly Circus in November 2023.

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Championing wellbeing

This year more than 9,000 young people took part in the Theatre Festival, reinterpreting Shakespeare in their own way and exploring the full spectrum of life’s emotions from killer kings to star-cross’d lovers.

CSSF’s hands-on approach encourages pupils from upper primary to further education levels to stretch themselves, and boosts vital life skills including confidence, resilience, empathy, teamwork and communication skills, as well as contributing to national curriculum delivery.

As young people perform with others from primary, secondary, SEND schools, and Pupil Referral Units (PRUs) on a professional

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Professional Theatre Stages

Writing a new future

The Voices writing competition enables children and young people aged eight to 25 who are in or leaving care to express their views and experiences and share their creative writing talent.

This year, the young winners from upper primary, lower secondary, upper secondary and care leaver categories were celebrated through awards supported by Cadence Innova, and had a further chance to shine by presenting their work to Her Majesty The Queen.

stage, a new world opens before their eyes. Teachers consistently report that participating in the festival has a positive impact across children’s entire education with improvements in literacy, school attendance, behaviour, motivation and better engagement with the core curriculum.

In the coming year, we will work with our partner Newcastle University to undertake further evaluation of the impact of the programme on current and past participants as we plan for the Silver Jubilee of the Festival in 2025.

We’ll also launch our inaugural Youth Board, bringing together young people from across the UK to have their say on school, Shakespeare and society and help shape the future of our programmes.

Matching support

This work is only possible with the generous support of individual donors and thanks go to The Childhood Trust and The Big Give for matching this support and enabling children and young people of all backgrounds and parts of the country to have a chance to shine.

“It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience to perform in a real theatre. If I could do it again I would.”

432 485 Schools Engaged Teachers Trained

“As the cost of living crisis intensifies, there are concerns that children from disadvantaged backgrounds are increasingly missing out on enriching extracurricular activities. Creative expression has a fundamental impact on children’s essential skills and wellbeing and we believe that every child should be entitled to participate in the arts. Whilst Shakespeare’s stories are over 400 years old, the themes such as friendship, rivalry, triumph, and love are still so relevant today and enable children to explore worlds beyond their own and build essential skills for the future.”