We talk about doing three things @company_three.

1. Making a space where young people feel safe to be themselves.

2. Making plays out of the things that emerge in that space.

3. Sharing our practice and process so others can adapt it for their work with teenagers.

Those three things always happen in that order. They exist a bit like a hierarchy of needs - because 3 can’t happen without 2 and nothing can happen without 1.

Throughout lockdown our primary concern was always with the welfare and wellbeing of our core group of 75 young people. While we were making the time capsule we were also checking in with everyone, all the time.

We spoke to our members and their parents, often weekly, fundraised for laptops, did socially distanced mentoring meet ups, worked with teachers, organised games nights, sent flowers when they suffered bereavements.

Why? Because it’s important, full stop. But also because without their trust, well-being and capacity to express themselves we can’t start to make work.

And the same this week, our first sessions back in-person.

Treading carefully into a new marked-out space, learning what it means to work without touch, without sharing objects, without singing or shouting or getting out of breath.

It took a day or two but we settled into it. By Wednesday we had reconfigured games. Got used to working solo in squares. Remembered to sanitise. Made it normal - and most importantly, fun.

That everyone left happy today is everything we could have hoped for.

And it’s a huge thing, because out of that happiness and connectivity will come stories, and hope, and the power to express themselves.

We didn’t make, or start, or even think about a new play this week.

Instead we laid the foundations for one - or some - that might appear one day in the very uncertain future.