Leading Glasgow actors and theatre-makers have teamed up to bring everything from unicorn dance parties to tongue-twister invention sessions to city families during lockdown.
Play Dates is the ingenious creation of the city’s National Theatre of Scotland and children’s arts organisations Starcatchers and Imaginate.
The eight-week programme of workshops and activities, created by some of the country’s leading artists and performers has been created especially as schools remain closed and families look for educational and fun things to do online.
From Tuesday to Friday over the next eight weeks, a new Play Dates workshop will be released every day on the National Theatre of Scotland website and social media channels. All the activities are free.
Weekly activities include Glasgow theatre artist Fraser MacLeod’s tongue twister workshops, Storify sessions explaining how to create and tell your own stories with city-based theatre-makers Sarah Rose Graber and Ruxy Cantir and Grow Your Own Gesamtkunstwerk, Veronika Velvette’s video series teaching you how to make a show in your own home.
Other highlights include the Unicorn Dance Party, designed to help everyone find their ‘inner unicorn’ and Everything’s A Moving Picture, workshops using video to tell stories with “stock” and archive footage at home.
Jackie Wylie, artistic director of National Theatre of Scotland said: “Scotland has a brilliant community of theatre-makers and creative practitioners who are unable to make theatre on our stages during these challenging times.
“This Play Dates series enables a group of facilitators to share their unique talents and skills with children and families at home. We hope to offer creative inspiration and high quality entertainment to children as well as fun for all the family to take part in while the schools are closed.”
Rhona Matheson, chief executive of Starcatchers added: “We’ve seen so many examples over the past few weeks of young children and their families’ wonderful capacity for creativity. All of the experiences will allow children to explore the world around them, develop curiosity and imagination and, most importantly, provide opportunities for connection.”
Paul Fitzpatrick, chief executive of Imaginate said: “As well as offering new artistic experiences for children and families Play Dates will also create new, paid work for artists in Scotland.”
The videos will be also be shown on the NTS website.
Source: Glasgow Evening Times