2025
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Mortal Fools X Newcastle Carers
Mortal Fools and Newcastle Carers are joining forces to empower young adult carers to engage with the arts and creativity.
Mortal Fools will be working with Newcastle Carers' Young Adult Carers (YAC) group, to co-design a creative intervention that is responsive to their ideas and needs, whilst supporting the group’s wellbeing, skills development, and creative health. |
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Watch This SpaceChange is everywhere; it’s scary, fun, unexpected, exciting, overwhelming, hopeful and so much more. But for young people, change often happens TO them – adults make the decisions, and they have to deal with the dizzying consequences.
In Summer 2025, our Youth Theatre groups explored the changes in their lives - holding tight to the things they love, making their own decisions, and discovering who they are. They might not know what the future will hold, but they’re ready for it! |
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Light UpBetween Autumn 2024 and Spring 2025, our Youth Theatre
groups were working on Light Up; exploring light, imagination, creativity and joy! We challenged our youth theatre to explore the ways in which light illuminates the beauty in the world around us, influences our mood and perspective, and in the absence of light, what mystery and magic may exist. |
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NCEA CONNECT Future Ready
Future Ready provides intensive and intentional employability enhancing interventions for young people aged 14-30 years old. Through our intervention models we use creative practice and social sciences to unlock young people’s potential and support their employability skills development.
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Mortal Fools X Youth MusicMortal Fools were funded by Youth Music via their Trailblazer Fund across Jan 2024 – Feb 2025. Our project was designed to help Mortal Fools integrate music-making into our artistic programmes and to increase access to creative opportunities for young people.
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2024
Mortal Fools X Natural England
Between October 2023 – March 2024, we worked with two groups of young people in Ashington to deliver creative activities using nature-based themes and source material to explore their thoughts, ideas, feelings, and experiences of nature in their area and in their lives as young people.
This creative intervention project was made possible thanks to the generous support of Natural England. |
INEVITABLE?
You’re 17. You arrive on the threshold. You stand amongst strangers, anticipating what comes next….
In Spring 2024 Mortal Fools Ensemble Young Company toured their latest contemporary theatre show, devised and performed by a group of Northumberland young people; showcasing an original soundtrack, bold set design, and their incredible talent, insights, and lived experiences. |
SOUNDING BOARD
Sounding Board was a Mortal Fools project, created to give our Youth Theatre members opportunities to explore the expressive power of music. This bold and hopeful project was inspired by the DIY music scene, and based on the belief that young people can use their voices to speak up about what matters to them through music.
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2023
THE BIGGER PICTUREThe voices of 75 young people from Northumberland and the North East come together in a collection of short films, created by Mortal Fools Youth Theatre with Fly Girl Films and Mortal Fools’ associate artists.
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FLUX 2023 TOURMortal Fools' Ensemble Young Company toured across the North in April 2023 with a reworked version of Flux. 12 unique young voices came together on stage, to explore what it means to question your identity in a world that feels determined to put you in a box.
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FLUX DIGITALThe film version of our 2022 Flux show, with accompanying resource pack to explore the reality of life for young people, exploring their identity and making decisions about their future. A positive and empowering film.
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FOOLS FEST 2023: THROUGH THE WARDROBEFools Fest 2023: Through The Wardrobe invited audiences to gather closely around the lamp post, standing tall amidst our snow-covered forest - joining in an extraordinary expedition led by Mortal Fools Youth Theatre.
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2022
WHEN THIS IS OVERPowered by the urgency of the present, young people offer their life stories, as an invitation to #ComeTogetherNow to shape our shared future.
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FLUX 2022 TOURDevised and performed by young people from all over Northumberland, Flux is a contemporary, dynamic and poignant piece of theatre which explores the fluidity of identity; showcasing an original soundtrack, bold set design, and the incredible talent and insights of young people.
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MY PEOPLEFour bitter-sweet, poignant film shorts from Mortal Fools’ Ensemble Young Company, following a group of young people navigating the reality of friendship in the modern world. What if growing up means growing apart?
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SPARKEDAn educational and practice-sharing video series about working in co-creation with children and young people.
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COME ON IN‘Home’ isn’t always a place, is it? Inspired by Northumberland author and illustrator Charlie Mackesy’s book, The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, Mortal Fools’ Youth Theatre invite you to a housewarming party like no other. So come on in and make yourself at home…
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FOOLS FEST 2022Over 200 people joined us for two December evenings of community celebration and revelry. From folklore and fairy tales, to music and monologues, over 80 young people performed, led the festivities, and delighted audiences.
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2021
LET US TELL YOUA coming together of young people’s powerful voices on film, and an invitation to step inside their thought-provoking and sometimes imaginary worlds.
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MELVA ONLINEA fun and accessible creative intervention, supporting children (aged 7-11) and the adults in their lives to talk openly about – and better understand – their mental health, emotions, and wellbeing.
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2020
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RELENTLESSAn original theatre show and tour that was cancelled due to COVID, about what it means to be growing up and getting by in a chaotic new decade. Fears, wants, hopes, and voices laid bare; accompanied by a soundtrack worthy of your most-played Spotify top spot.
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CORONAVIRUS TIME CAPSULEA week-by-week response to the pandemic, through the eyes of young people everywhere.
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WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS NOWCapturing the imaginations, creativity, and thoughts of children, to create a gift to the world during uncertain times.
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WHEN THE WORLD IS LOUDAn audio theatre experience to help you drown out the noise of the modern world. Accompanied by original music and soundscape, Mortal Fools Youth Theatre take you on a journey of discovery, escape, and hope for the future.
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2019
HUGGING DOGS
A theatre show about happiness, devised with young people from Collingwood School & Media Arts College, with specialist educational needs and disabilities (SEND). Maybe we spend too much time looking for happiness in the wrong places? Maybe it’s often right in front of us all along?
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IWEIGH
A dynamic and thought-provoking show that explored what we are worth, and how we can learn to value and accept ourselves and each other in today’s world of unrealistic expectations.
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SAY IT PLAY IT
Our second attempt at a fully improvised event – even bigger and better than the last one! With improv-expert Rachael Walsh leading the way in the practitioner team, all four of our MFYT groups (Stage 2, Stage 3, OMS and Ensemble) really pushed themselves, with Ensemble taking things one step further and performing an entirely improvised short-play. (July 2019)
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IN WITH THE NEW |
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We explored the theme of overcoming fear, and the characters and drama all came out of discussions whilst devising. The group have created a beautiful piece of theatre which will resonate with anyone who has said “I’ll put it off until tomorrow!” (December 2019)
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2018
MFYT SKILLS TERMAs our termly performance projects continued to get bigger and more ambitious, we decided it was important to give our members space to develop their performance and devising skills, without the pressure of an end of term performance. Our Spring Skills Terms were all about our members trying out new things, learning new skills, and working out how best to work as an ensemble group. This project was ran annually from 2018. (January-March 2018)
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STOCKING FILLERS
For most of us, Christmas is happy, sparkly, and exciting - but for others, the festive period can be an extremely challenging time.
We wanted the groups to think about what really matters at this time of year, and they explored this through an evening of micro-theatre. The event was followed by our annual youth theatre awards! (December 2018) |
SUMMER SCRIPTWRITINGFor three days in August, two of our Mortal Fools facilitators worked with a group of young people from Prudhoe and the surrounding area on a scriptwriting masterclass!
The workshops covered the basics of scriptwriting, looking at everything from how to structure a script, to creating their own unique characters. This project was funded by Prudhoe Town Council as part their 42 Days of Summer programme. |
Even earlier projects!
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