On Friday 23 January 2026, we hosted one of our favourite events of the year. The ‘Meet your Mentor’ session is the launch event for the Devising Discovery outreach programme. On this day, the Lead Artists who will be delivering outreach in the schools come to the University of Exeter to meet the 18 students on the Applied Drama module who will be working alongside them.
This is such a joyful and feeding day – it’s a chance to all be together in a room and to prepare for the mammoth feat that is this outreach programme’s delivery phase.
It’s also a wonderful thing to be able to gather together in a room as an artistic team. These moments are rare and precious in the industry at the moment, as strained budgets and skelatal arts infrastructure can make it increasingly difficult to manage to have moments of gathering.
One of my favourite parts of this event is the chance to teach other new toolkit games/exercises – each of us is keen to grow and develop in our facilitation craft, and this workshop is always really good fun but useful in terms of equipping us with new material.
The next time we see each other all together again will be at the final platform event – as each facilitation team heads out to their respective schools to deliver outreach. Good luck to all – see you on the flip side!
This year’s platform is taking place on Valentine’s Day – 14 February 2026. It feels fitting, as a final hurrah. This programme is in it’s 16th and final year this year. More to come on this later, but for now, just wanted to share these joyful photos and say a big thank you in advance to all the wonderful team who work so hard to make it happen.
