Featured project 2024/2025: Small Birds with Big Hearts

During the 2024–2025 year, several projects impressed us! Over 500 youths between 8 and 12 years old could come on stage and experiment with theatre variants thanks to Youth Fusion and their amazing coordinator and facilitator teams. The module, which takes place from October to May, allows youth to read and write theatre plays, to learn the theatre vocabulary, to improvise, to create characters, to build sets and, of course, to express themselves in front of an audience. Indeed, all those students had the chance to interpret a text they wrote in front of an audience during the great artistic event that features their work and imagination.

From Barclay Primary School in Parc-Extension, 3 classes participating in the Dramatic Arts module presented their final show at Lucien Pagé Secondary School on May 9, 2025: Ms. Mélanie Paquet's class (grade 5), Mr. Daniel Laforme's class (grade 5) and Ms. Fatima Mekbouthi's class (grade 2, host class). They certainly stood out for their creativity, rigour and the important social issues addressed in their play “Little Birds”. It was with solidarity and admiration that the public and jury recognized all their efforts and talents.

Inspired by the album Scary Bird by Michael Streich, the students wanted to talk about their own experience of immigration, often marked by incomprehension and obstacles, before arriving at acceptance. The play, written as a group, resonated with many and illustrated their reality through a fictional story. In Ms. Fatima's class, the 16 students created everything: text, sets, costumes, songs and choreography. Despite the ten pages entirely in French, the youth delivered a performance imbued with emotion, courage and great talent.

On May 9, their performance struck a chord with the audience. Emotional silence, spontaneous laughter, a standing ovation: it was all there. Bravo to the Barclay students, who both moved and shone. Their journey continues in Parc-Extension, Montreal, their new home.