We have to find a better way to care for our young people. I hope my play helps start that

Writer Lin Coghlan and director Jim Pope discuss the behind the scenes of Playing ON’s touring production Flock, which platforms authentic realities from the young people behind the care system.

LIN: Firstly, I think the only way you can write a play like this is to go in with no expectations of what the story is going to be.

In fact, I’d worked on the project for a couple of years before the story started to come to me. I’m not care experienced myself, but I grew up in extremely chaotic circumstances and left home while I was still a teenager. I have a lot of empathy for the level of fear that goes with feeling you’re completely on your own without any support structure. Still, that’s not the same as care. I felt it was my job to listen and a great many of the workshops we facilitated were spent just allowing the young people to create characters – because it was clear that a great deal of lived experience was coming through those fictionalised stories.

One thing I’ve never forgotten is how powerless you are as a child or young person. And so often those young people who experience the care system feel that their opinions, needs and feelings get ignored. I wanted to write something that shows what it might be like to have a childhood where you feel like everything in life is ‘done to you’ but no one seems to hear or understand you.

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JIM:  Being heard and understood was a key element when devising this production. At Playing ON, we work with partners in the criminal justice system, the mental health sector and the care sector using theatre-making to help people tell stories from their own point of view. It began when we initially created a ten-week programme called Raising the Roof, which arose from a partnership with Leap Confronting Conflict in 2020. They helped us with recruitment and provided staff whom we trained in delivering theatre exercises. Recruitment is always a challenge in a sector, drowning in bureaucracy and our most significant partner to date has been Social Care London run by Colin Taylor, who offer accommodation to care experienced young people across London and Kent. They have an incredible staff team who joined in with our programme. To have them acting in a devised performance alongside the young people they care for was a truly joyous experience.

LIN: Social work is one of the hardest jobs anyone can have. Social workers I know are exhausted, and often worked to collapse. We met many across the project who sacrificed everything for the young people in their care. Yet again and again I heard stories which seemed to defy common sense when it came to the welfare of young people in care. It’s complex of course, and part of that complexity is about staffing and budgets and government priorities, but I was left feeling that there must be, there has to be a better way to care for our young people. Children moved repeatedly when it is against their best interests, siblings separated, successful placements ended for reasons no one can fathom, with such a general sense of loss and despondency for both young people and staff.

If this play can do one thing, I hope it might contribute to a discussion about whether we can find a better way to do this – for both young people and their social workers and carers.

JIM: The resilience of the young people in the care system that we’ve met inspired Lin to write a poetic and nuanced play that reflects their truth. The play does not use “verbatim” script or lift anyone’s entire story and put it on stage, but it does offer an opportunity to share truthful depictions of the care experience with the public.

Raising The Roof participants attended rehearsed readings throughout the writing process, offering feedback to Lin during debrief sessions. Much of the inspiration came from speaking to the young people we worked with about the real challenges they faced. Being separated from siblings was a common theme and the struggle to keep family together whilst in the care system can be enormous. Key milestones in the lives of typical young adults can be much more complicated for those who have been in care. Entering higher education, employment and coping with emotional roller coaster experiences such as love and loss without a solid family base are that much more challenging. We wanted to give space for audiences to reflect on that and perhaps to challenge some of their own preconceptions about what it means to grow up in care.

This will be our largest professional tour to date, which will help us to expand our networks across the UK and bring these important realities to more audiences.

We are working with theatre venues to bring together a network of local stakeholders including education providers, foster carers and social workers in each region. In each town we visit on tour we have employed a “local engagement specialist” to help reach care experienced young people and professionals in the area. We want to bring them to the theatre to see the show and invite them to participate in discussions, workshops and be celebrated. In this way we can make meaningful relationships across the UK and use the play as a calling card to announce our other services.  It would be great if, rather than parachuting in and out from London, we can create meaningful relationships with local councils and find partners with whom we can deliver more of our Raising the Roof theatre programmes.

Flock will be at the Salford Lowry, Salford, Manchester, on 14 and 15 November.

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