Spotlight: Novo Theatre

Earlier this year, November Club rebranded as Novo Theatre. We have been chatting with Participation and Talent Producer,  Louise Taylor-Asheg, to find out more about the work Novo has been doing with young people in Northumberland.

Novo Theatre is a professional theatre company which tells original stories in unusual places and spaces across Northumberland, taking inspiration from the geography, landscape, industry and heritage of the region.

Their work often involves co-creation with local communities, including children and young people in partnership with Northumberland schools.

Home from Home

Home from Home was an R&D project co-created with pupils from Lowick & Holy Island CE First School and award-winning children’s author & theatre maker Lisette Auton.

Over the course of six months Lisette explored with the children ideas of friendship and feelings, which inspired her to write the script. Designer Amy Watts brought their vision to life in the school gym, creating an out of this world experience for the pupils, who discovered the alien spaceship crash-landed on their school yard!

This was an immersive theatre experience where small groups of children and families stepped into a multi-sensory adventure. With one actor, as the role of the alien, the group played games and explored big feelings – friendship, belonging, and the joy of helping others.

Josey, The Indignant Daughter

In 2022, Novo Theatre secured funding from The Space to create a 20-minute musical podcast, written and performed by Katie Doherty. The end result, ‘Josey, The Indignant Daughter’, was created in collaboration with young women and men at Dukes Secondary School, Ashington and Cramlington Learning Village and released on International Women’s Day in March 2023. Josey was inspired by 19th Century feminist and social reformer, Josephine Butler, who was born in Wooler, and the young people were asked “If Josey was alive today, what would she be campaigning for?”

Their voices feature heavily in the podcast as they navigate their way around life as a teenager in the current social climate of social media influencers– these discussions showed that some things have changed dramatically since the late 1800’s and others are still relevant today.

Novo Theatre are working behind the scenes on the next stage of Josey: The Musical and are hoping to produce a full stage show in 2026.

Novo Talent

When emerging from COVID and once again to creating live work for audiences, Novo Theatre struggled to recruit freelance stage managers and production managers. Not being the only theatre company experiencing this, Novo launched a workforce survey to better understand the barriers freelance theatre makers were experiencing, and the types of opportunities they felt would help support them. This led to the 2023 launch of Novo Talent, a three-strand talent development programme to grow new talent in the North East and to sustain creative freelancers in their careers.

The Ignite strand aims to offer paid assistant or trainee roles within Novo Theatre productions with the aim of supporting individuals to develop skills and confidence in the industry, while the Sustain strand recognises the difficulty in maintaining a freelance career in the North East and supports established freelancers.

Alongside ethically benchmarked freelance contracts, individuals receive personal development packages that include CPD budgets, external mentoring, and facilitated introductions to regional and national contacts. To-date the programme has supported 8 freelance beneficiaries including Producers, Designers, Directors and Stage Managers.

The Inspire strand partners with Primary and Secondary schools to provide careers assemblies and workshops which highlight the range of careers within theatre, from stage management to lighting design. These aim to show children and young people in Northumberland that there are more opportunities in theatre than performing on stage and signpost them to opportunities to get involved in theatre-making in Northumberland.

Since launching in 2023 Novo Theatre have engaged with over 3,000 children, regularly contributing to the careers programmes at Duke’s Secondary, Cramlington Learning Village and The King Edward VI High school in Morpeth, including providing 13 week-long work experience placements.

After initially focusing on opportunities for Keys Stage 3 & 4 pupils, this year Novo Theatre has created a KS2 workshop. By extending the programme to primary and first schools, their aim is to provide age-appropriate information and points of inspiration throughout children’s school journeys, from Year 3 through to Year 11 and beyond.

This Autumn, Novo Theatre also took part in Discover! Creative Careers ‘Next Generation Creatives’ Work Experience Programme, a national pilot funded by DCMS to provide meaningful hands-on work experience in creative industries. Five students from Dukes Secondary attended three days work experience with Novo Theatre and The Alnwick Playhouse, participating in a speed networking event with staff to find out about their roles, taking over the light and sound desks in the auditorium and working with box office and front of house staff before a performance.

The Novo Talent schools programme runs throughout the academic year and is offered at no cost to Northumberland schools.

To find out more, email Louise on louise@novotheatre.org.uk