Charlotte’s creative DYCP project
Arts Council England has a funding programme that helps artists develop their skills. Charlotte Little is an actor and director, and has been a member of DIY for over ten years. In April 2025, Charlotte began a project to learn more about directing and bring these skills back to DIY. Here’s what Charlotte has to say about the experience:
My name is Charlotte Little and I am a confident director. In the past, I’ve done a paid trainee course with Access All Areas, my one was in co-directing. Last year, I put together a DYCP application. DYCP stands for Developing Your Creative Practice. Because some of the sections of the DYCP were too hard to understand, I broke them down into steps with my Creative Support Worker to understand them better. 2 or 3 months after I found out that I got my DYCP!
In the past year I’ve been working with different people from different organisations, who have been helping me develop in the different areas that I wanted to explore. These were: how to make characters from head to toe, how to stay in character and how to stay in character when you get distracted. Some of the things I’ve done are:
- Played a problem-solving game with Access All Areas who I visited in London
- Shadowed different rehearsals and workshops with Nickie Miles-Wildin who has directed for Graeae
- Had Zoom meetings with different people learning about Creative Captioning
- Taken my learning to two different DIY Theatre groups, Core Company and DIY BUDS.
What have you learnt through your DYCP?
I have learnt a whole new different set of skills that I can use in different groups. I’ve become more confident. It felt like I had a little bit of confidence, but it feels like I’ve gone from a 5 to 100!
I’ve learnt how to use a drama exercise to help people problem solve. They (Access All Areas) staged the problem first and then got the group to help them overcome the problem.
Charlotte visiting Access All Areas (left) and seeing a show directed by Nickie Miles-Wildin at LIPA (right).
What has been one of your favourite things?
Working with bigger groups who have a lot of different Learning Disabilities, because I didn’t think I’d be able to work with bigger groups. I used to be nervous, but now I’ve grown in confidence.
What did you learn from the Deafinitely Theatre show?
Even though you have Disabilities you can still communicate and still teach people BSL. You can put your own stamp on performances. I used to think about having BSL on the side but now I have seen it incorporated into the performances that’s what I would like to do.
What have you taken and put into DIY Theatre so far?
I learnt an exercise about how to get rid of nerves and how to project your voice called Blowing the Balloon Up. I taught it to a member at Core Company.
What do you hope to do in the future?
I hope to get my performance onto a stage, and see more theatre with Creative Captions and BSL.
What is your advice for someone who would like to do a DYCP?
If you know what direction you want to go in, the DYCP is a short application, and you can break it down into what you have done already, what you’re good at and what you want to improve on. If you apply and it goes wrong, you can try again for DYCP.
Georgia (who has been Charlotte’s Creative Support) says:
It has been fantastic to see Charlotte’s confidence grow over the year. She always asks brilliant questions to everyone she’s learning from. Charlotte led a whole DIY BUDS session recently and produced beautiful movement work with our group. I’m excited to see what she does next.
Core Company rehearsing scenes directed by Charlotte as part of this DYCP project.