Young Voices, Powerful Choices is a project that was created by Maritime Housing, Regenda and Altru Drama as a response to local events and issues around gun and knife crime and levels of violence in the Grisedale / Everton area of Liverpool.

The project was designed to complement local diversionary activities by creating a forum for discussion and debate and giving young people the chance to explore the issues in their own communities.

In local schools, drama practitioners worked with year 6 classes to create drama pieces that reflected their knowledge and understanding, thoughts and opinions on gun and knife crime. The performances told their stories and showed characters that the children created themselves. Through delivering the project in this way we were able to create very different pieces of theatre in each school that were highly personalised to the children involved in each one.

The project was such a success in 2008 that it is being repeated in Autumn 2009 with the new year 6 pupils.


“Superb, wonderful on all levels – examining causes and effects of crime and also excellent for developing co-operation, concentration and performance”
Teacher at Hope Valley Primary School
“The implications of gun and knife crime no longer appear fun or glamourized as children quite often perceive it in the media and entertainment”
Teacher at The Beacon Primary
“An excellent programme – well timed and a must for young people in this community. Having an opportunity to verbalise and dramatise difficult situations is probably the most important work we will do this year. Please continue this work year on year.”
Headteacher at Our Lady Immaculate Primary School

Devising theatre performances with young people and using drama as a stimulus to develop understanding and explore issues is key to our work at Altru Drama. If you would like to discuss developing a similar project then please call Kate on 0151 443 0333.