Calling all young creators for Future Directions 2025!
- Do you want to create music or film, sing, direct or perform
- A you between 16-26 years old, living or working in Rhondda Cynon Taf?
- Want to work with professional creatives alongside other young people to create a new digital opera?
Sign up for our next creative residencies here.
FUTURE DIRECTIONS is a young people’s programme which brings together neurotypical and neurodivergent, learning disabled and autistic people age 16 – 25. It is an invitation to create YOUR story in music and to make a new digital opera.
Future Directions is the Music Theatre Wales Young Company, a continuous programme that sits at the heart of the company’s main activity. Its aim is to create a digital opera that is created by, with and for young people.
What is a Digital Opera? It can be whatever YOU want it to be – combining music, singing, script, performance and film to tell whatever story you want to tell. It is made to be seen on screen – computer or cinema (we have already shown Future Directions pieces in cinemas and at film festivals) – as a uniquely digital experience. There are no rules – you create your own.
This year, MTW is bringing Future Directions to RCT. Working alongside professional facilitators, over the course of two 3-day creative workshops, the Young Company will collaborate through the combination of story, music, performance and film to create a new opera that speaks for them and of their experience and ideas – storytelling in music as a digital form.
“It was definitely a great opportunity to explore and develop an understanding of all our differences – in our everyday lives and creatively. There was also ample opportunity to explore how to bring those differences together to create something beautiful and explore universal truths” – Past Future Directions participant
Creative Residencies
Friday 25 April 2025
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Tuesday 27 to Thursday 29 May 2025
Between residencies, participants are encouraged to continue their creative journey and to share their ideas, poetry and music with the rest of the Young Company and creative team. We will also host online creative sessions between the residencies, as well as one in person touch base day on Friday 25 April 2025 (also at the Parc & Dare Theatre).
Premiere and Presentation
Premiere and presentation We are thrilled that this year, the premiere of the digital opera will take place in front of a live audience! The first viewing of the opera will form part of a celebratory concert, bringing together new music from across MTW’s artistic programmes. This will take place on Thursday 11 September 2025, in the main auditorium of the Parc & Dare Theatre. The opera is then presented as one of MTW’s core productions on our website to be shared far and wide, seeking new audiences and finding new ways to surprise and excite those who already love our work.
The creative team
Meet the fantastic team of creative facilitators that you will be working with:
Jain Boon Creative Facilitator, Director & Dramaturg
Llio Evans Singer and Vocal Facilitator
Tom Elstob Music Maker
Redbrck Filmmakers
We need you!
As with all our work, Future Directions is a project that celebrates inclusion and diversity and we warmly welcome young participants age 16 – 25 from all backgrounds. It is delivered in partnership with Hijinx Theatre – one of Europe’s leading inclusive theatre companies, working with neurodivergent, learning disabled and/or autistic artists on stage and screen. And we are keen to stress that one of the major features of Future Directions is the way it brings together young people with and without additional needs, to work together through the combination of story, music, performance and film – storytelling in music as a digital form.
“The balance between the creative work of the young people and the team was good – the work we did was like a continuation of their work. This felt right…..it was never Us and Them, we were all together” – Past Future Directions Creative Team member