About Us

Lewisham Youth Theatre is a youth-led creative hub providing free participatory drama, performance and backstage programmes to young people aged 8-25 who live or learn in Lewisham.

We also provide creative career training, paid work experience pathways, leadership training, creative activism projects and a space for local artists.

We reach approximately 250 young people annually in regular programmes, and approximately 700 young people annually in one-off workshops and events.

Our Mission

All young people have a powerful voice and a right to be heard.

We nurture and inspire young artists’ voices through free participatory theatre activities, helping them to develop enduring and transferable skills that lead to long-term well-being.

We bring young people together from across the Lewisham community to create outstanding theatre in an environment of high expectations and collaboration. We work from the core belief that artistic excellence is key to expanding young people’s horizons and creating lasting transformation.

Our Participants

LYT is a youth-led space for young people aged 8–25 who live or learn in Lewisham and all of our projects are completely free. Young people participate in all aspects of our work — from devising their own performances to shaping organisational policy — their voices mean LYT is a platform for youth-driven creativity.

The majority of our participants identify as facing disadvantages such as:

Coming from families on low incomes
Having special educational needs (including physical disabilities and/or neurodivergence)
Requiring additional support to take part (including looked after children, young carers, those with mental health difficulties, English as an additional language, low literacy or numeracy)
Being referred from local partners, including schools, pupil referral units, Child & Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), Lewisham social care services and the youth offending team

Our History

Lewisham Youth Theatre was founded in 1987 and has been creating high-quality theatre with young people ever since. Throughout the 1990s we delivered innovative projects across the borough, before finding a long-term home at the Broadway Theatre, Catford in 2002, where we stayed until 2020.

When the pandemic hit, we took our programmes online before taking over a multi-storey retail space in Lewisham Town Centre. This gave us the opportunity to explore how to become a youth-led creative hub.

In 2023 we moved to our current home — a disused community centre between Lewisham & Catford — enabling us to expand our offer and realise our vision more completely. We’ve been gradually adapting and improving our space to support our ambitious and innovative theatre-making. You can find out more and view our past productions here.