Opinion with Nicholai La Barrie

I have seen magic happen, I have seen people remake themselves, I have seen a spark ignite, take hold and I have seen it happen in six weeks.

START at the Lyric Hammersmith is our flagship programme of targeted work with young people aged 16-21 who are (NEET) Not in Education, Employment or Training. They work for six weeks Monday to Thursday with a team of professional creatives to make a show that is performed in the Lyric Studio theatre. 84% of participants from the past year have re-engaged with employment, training or education after completing the programme.

Those are the basics, but that doesn't begin to tell the nuanced story of the journey that the group goes on. The rehearsal room is designed to be a supportive, creative environment with staff working to make sure that when the young people and creatives are in the room they are doing their best work.

The support staff are doing everything from calling the young people every morning to make sure they are awake and on their way in, to much more complex things like ensuring they have safe places to sleep at night, and everything in between. This means that when the young people are in the room, the life changing can happen.

A creative process for an established artist involves testing, changing, gut instinct, failure and at the end you hope to have something that you might want to share.

For a group of young people that have no understanding of that process, it's more complex. So they work with creatives who take them through a process of self-discovery. They are gently challenged to invest in themselves, in their own ideas, in each other and to try new things – while building confidence, skills and team work.

It's this gentle challenge that allows for the remaking of self. Seeing yourself write a script that is performed back to you, deliver a monologue that one of the company wrote, or even the achievement of turning up the rehearsal for four days in a row. Things that in the first week would have seemed like your own personal Mount Everest.

The distance they travel in six week is phenomenal and sets a pattern that then permeates the rest of their lives. The idea that ‘if I can do this, what else might I be able to do?’ is what takes hold. That process is the magic that creates a new person.