Why Wellbeing Comes First: Stefan’s Reflection

When I joined Trybe House Theatre as Wellbeing Lead, I’d spent years working in clinical and statutory settings, CAMHS, Youth Offending Services, Catch-22. I’d seen what happens when young people fall through gaps in the system: how quickly disengagement hardens into distrust, and how rarely the right support reaches those who need it most.

What drew me to THT was the recognition that wellbeing isn’t a bolt-on. It’s not a ten-minute check-in at the start of a session before you get to the “real work.” At THT, wellbeing is the work. Everything we do, from the warm-up games to the devising exercises to the conversations over lunch, is designed to create the conditions for emotional safety and growth.

I’ve worked with young men who were told they were “hard to reach.” That phrase has always frustrated me. These young men aren’t hard to reach. The services designed to support them are hard to access. There’s a difference.

What THT does is meet young men where they are, physically, emotionally, culturally. We don’t ask them to fit into our framework. We build the framework around them. And that’s why it works.

The creative element is crucial. Many of the young men I work with have learned to be suspicious of direct conversation about their feelings. But give them a character to inhabit, a scene to devise, a beat to lay down, and suddenly they’re expressing things they’ve never said aloud. Theatre gives them permission to feel.

That’s not therapy. It’s something more fundamental. It’s belonging.