For three decades, The RYTC in Warwick has been providing young people with a space to find their voice.

The organisation uses theatre, film, music and the performing arts to help youngsters build confidence, develop new skills and discover opportunities they may not otherwise have encountered.

But the story of RYTC begins long before the workshops, performances and festivals.

It begins with its founder, Helen Kenworthy, and her own experience of growing up feeling like the child nobody noticed, until she found theatre and the creative arts.

"Before the awards, before three organisations, before 'Brilliantly Underestimated' was ever a phrase on a brochure, there was a quiet girl at the back of the classroom who nobody noticed was struggling and who was blamed when she was bullied" reflected Helen.

Speaking about her early school days, Helen described herself as the "quiet, shy mouse".

She went on to share that while her childhood was blanketed in a loving home, Helen's family were affected by poor mental health.

Helen shared: "It wasn't a home without love. But it was a home where I learned, early and instinctively, to walk on eggshells. To read a room before I'd even stepped into it and to sense when something had changed and to be ready for whatever might happen next."

As a result of this, Helen learned not to be the child demanding attention, and at school she was one of the quieter children in the classroom.

But an unexpected opportunity to take part in a school production of Shakespeare would change the direction of her life.

While she didn't know it at the time, taking part in the Shakespeare play, eventually led Helen to 0-Level drama, after an 'incorrect careers advice session' and ultimately led to the inspiration behind the RYTC.

For the first time, Helen found something that made her feel confident and a place where she felt she belonged. And that feeling of belonging is very much a part of what makes the work Helen does today so personal and so important to her.

The organisation was built around a simple idea: to create the kind of safe, supportive environment that Helen had discovered through drama and to give other young people the opportunity to find their own "gang", their own voice and their own sense of possibility.

But, what theatre couldn't guarantee Helen was protection. She was bullied at school and then blamed for it, told in one way or another that the bullying was her own doing, rather than something done to her.

"It's a pattern many of the children I now work with will recognise instantly, carrying the consequences of something that was never their fault" explained Helen.

The difference the RYTC makes

After school, Helen went on to train in education alongside drama, psychology of education and sociology of education, determined to properly understand what makes a learning environment feel safe for a young person. She highlighted this ambition was very much inspired by her own experiences growing up and her ambition to make a difference.

Helen began her career in the creative arts including working for London's West End theatre, community theatre, and London-based theatre-in-education.

"I found the young people I was working alongside at the time kept asking me for more chances to perform, so I decided to build them one. That's how the youth theatre aspect of the RYTC began" said Helen.

The next chapter arrived almost by chance too.

A musical director asked if Helen had ever tutored English. She took on two students, loved it instantly, and found herself drawn, again and again, towards children with special educational need, children whose school experiences mirrored her own far too closely to ignore.

Later, while setting up an English department for an Alternative Provision setting, Helen expressed the fact new management tried to force rigid, mainstream structures onto traumatised learners who became frightened of losing the one environment that had ever actually felt safe to them.

"I did what she I have always done when something necessary doesn't exist, I decided to build it myself, and that's how Education Selection Box came to be" said Helen.

Now in its 30th year the company has evolved into the RYTC Creatives, spanning film, digital media and performing arts.

It is, at its heart, the same story told twice over. A girl who was bullied, blamed, and unseen became a woman who makes absolutely certain no child in her care is ever made to feel that way.

"Every safe, flexible, child-led space across RYTC, Education Selection Box and Give Get Go Education carries that same promise forward: for every 'Brilliantly Underestimated' child who just needs one adult, finally, to notice" Helen expressed.

To find out more about the story behind the work, or talk to Helen directly, visit here.