The Baby Board
Usually when I make a new work I spend months, even years, researching the core subject or idea for the work. I read as much as I can, ask questions of other people but embarking on making work for young audiences felt like I needed to do something differently. I COULD have read lots of books about child development and essential milestones etc but somehow that didn’t feel right for this process. I did however acknowledge the fact that I’d never made work for young audiences before therefore I needed to bring different wisdom into the room.
Thanks to Facebook, I had seen a Vimeo clip of Sprog Rock’s Board Meeting, chaired by the brilliant Laurie Brown. As the tears of laughter rolled down my face I began to think that maybe what we needed throughout the development was our own board - a Baby Board. I put a callout on Facebook looking for babies under 2, and their grown-ups, who would be willing to come into our rehearsals once a week and see what we were up to. The response was overwhelming! This was an amazing opportunity for us to observe the responses of our ‘target audience’ to what we were making, see what they were attracted to or repelled from. It was the baby board that helped us to determine what the best age bracket for this work was. I would thoroughly recommend to anyone making work for young audiences for the first time to surround yourself with your ‘target audience’ – and remember to cut to grapes longways!!