The Birmingham Hippodrome Young Advocates is a group of 14-22 year olds who work towards a collective vision for Birmingham Hippodrome’s future, feeding back to the organisation’s senior team and Board as well as working on individual development. The group of young people work closely with the Hippodrome to programme and produce events for young people and receive training, mentoring and access to a range of different opportunities within the arts industry.

This year, the Hippodrome employed six Young Advocates to work on Birmingham Weekender 2024, bringing essential support across the bank holiday weekender of outdoor arts.

The festival’s Access Assistant was Saffy, who worked with Hippodrome staff to provide access provision at the festival, including highlighting which performances needed captioning and audio description and being a friendly face around the festival whilst being an Access host.

Working with Learning Artists Ashlee and Cheryl, Tori came on board as the Community Assistant to plan the community ‘routes’ around the festival. She worked to make sure the Community Hub was a welcoming place to visit and assisted as a Community Host, showing local groups everything that the festival had to offer.

Tallulah was our Production Assistant and gained an insight the behind the scenes and technical building of the festival and festival stages. She helped with making sure the weekend was safe and easy to navigate by creating signage for visitors.

Young Advocate Chevorn joined the festivals team as the Programming Assistant, learning about the artists performing within the festival and gained insight into programming a festival of this scale. One of our Community Host was Bradley who worked across the weekend to welcome and host community groups, introducing them to the various sites.

And finally, Harvey worked as the Marketing Assistant for the festival, planning content for the Instagram takeover, interviewing artists and performers, creating social media copy for specific events in the lead up to Weekender.

Speaking about the experience Harvey said: “The opportunities I have been offered through Birmingham Hippodrome have helped me develop practical, professional skills as well as personal traits. Across the years I have learnt a lot about the industry, the working world and myself.”

“As a Young Advocate I have been given many opportunities that have become my proudest achievements and help me grow into a more mindful and positive person. I am so grateful for all the chances I have been given.”

Charlotte Boyer, Access Lead at Birmingham Hippodrome, shared her thoughts on the Young Advocates at Birmingham Weekender, saying: “It’s been amazing to have been part of our Young Advocates’ varying experiences with Birmingham Hippodrome. Collectivley and individually, they have such a huge pool of talents and skills which we have seen develop over the years. They have all made a lasting impression on Birmingham Hippodrome, and we can’t wait to see what they do next.”

Our Young Advocates will continue to meet until the end of the year, and some may choose to continue their journey with us in 2025. Until the end of the year, they will work on skills sharing, take part in a CV workshop and focus on next steps training to help them with any further opportunities that come their way. To round off the year, they will all be watching Play On! in the main house.

If you are interested in becoming a Young Advocate, you can find out more about the programme by scanning this QR code.