Livya and Shamini are on work experience this week, working with ENO Baylis. They are writing a daily blog on their experiences at ENO and especially this week’s project based on Janáček’s opera, Jenufa. Both are talking with the other young people taking part in the project and finding out about how the production is coming along. Livya and Shamini are Year 10 students from Kingsbury High School, a 2015 Opera Squad school.

“This week we’re fortunate to be completing some work experience with the ENO during their summer project on engaging young people in the opera, Jenufa. We started off being introduced to all the ENO staff here at the Lilian Baylis House and went on to attempt to memorise every location of the rooms in this highly complex building. Our first task was to stick the question, ‘What are you most looking forward to this week?’ on the wall to which the students here could think about during the day and write their answer on a post-it note. To achieve a good turnout of answers, we spoke to some of the young people and encouraged them to write their answer to the question. A few of our favourite replies included people saying they wanted to ‘meet new people’ and ‘step out of their comfort zone’.

The first session of the whole project invited all the participants (including some of the staff) to ‘break the ice’ between everyone and let loose. This warm up/team building exercise allowed people to feel comfortable around new people they would soon be working around for the rest of the week. Basically, this got rid of the awkwardness.

We’re looking forward to working more with the ENO staff members as they have been extremely friendly so far!”