Meet HIT’s Freelancers: Kasia Truefitt

At Herts Inclusive Theatre, our team is more than just staff, freelancers and volunteers – it’s a community of dedicated people, each bringing their unique skills and passion to support our commitment to inclusivity. Each branch of the team – staff, freelancers, and volunteers – bring something unique to the running of Herts Inclusive Theatre. Our freelancers are an essential part of what we do.

But what does a HIT Freelancer actually do?

Today, we’re excited to bring you an interview with one of our freelancers, Kasia Truefitt, to answer that question!  Kasia currently works with our Stevenage, Borehamwood, and Hemel groups.

Read on to hear all about what Kasia does in a day as a freelancer, some of the training and development opportunities she’s had, and why HIT is a great charity to freelance for.

Hi Kasia! How did you get involved with HIT? What drew you to HIT in the first place?

 

August 2022 – I saw a callout from HIT looking for new facilitators and I’d only moved back to Hertfordshire – I grew up in the area but moved back – about six months before that. So, I was looking to connect with different creative opportunities that were happening in Hertfordshire. Obviously, looking for more work! That was the first time I’d heard of HIT, and so applied for the role to become part of the freelance pool and was successful in doing so. I took on some of the group work initially starting in that September.

 

I was interested in developing my practice around working more inclusively because with my background being as a dancer, I hadn’t had a lot of training in that. But I was also really interested in what was happening in Hertfordshire where I was then going to be living locally.

 

What was your background in prior to working with HIT?

 

I trained as a contemporary dancer and then I did a master’s degree in choreography. I worked for a few years for a theatre in London when I graduated and was choreographing productions and working as a freelance choreographer and dance artist.

 

Then I started to get a bit more involved in community work, so, looking at project managing different projects for the community, whether that be in drama or dance. And then quite a few years into my career of freelancing, teaching, choreographing, I became really interested in working specifically with young children: the importance of movement and dance and the impact that could have on mental health.

 

So, I trained as a dance mindfulness facilitator and set my own company up. I have been working for six, seven years now at developing shows that go into schools and workshops and early intervention dance and movement work for children aged four to ten – how that can support their wellbeing through dance and mindfulness.

 

That’s my background of what I was doing before I worked for HIT, which I’m still doing as well. They complement each other quite nicely.

 

What does your job as a freelancer with HIT involve? What kind of things will you get up to during a work day?

 

I’m in my third-year freelancing for HIT and second year of being in the office in the core team. So, I work with the Stevenage group, the Borehamwood group, and I’ve just started working with the Hemel group on Saturdays.

 

A day of freelancing for HIT is – on a practical level – turning up a little bit early and checking in with the team. It’s always really lovely to work across the different groups, and all of the team are just really lovely and really diverse, really different backgrounds and training, and everyone brings something different to the team which I really love as well. I really love working for HIT: you learn a lot off of different people.

 

We have our check-in at the beginning; it’s always really nice to see where everyone’s at that week. And then we would usually do a check-in with the participants as they arrive. Currently, my role as a freelancer is to be the Assistant Facilitator for Inclusion, so I’ve gotten to know the families really well. So, I’ll usually be at the door, greeting families and the young people and making sure everyone is okay. If there are any additional needs that week or access needs that they might require: if they’ve had a bit of a tricky week, or they might be feeling slightly dysregulated it’s good to pick that up at the door. Then support them as they come in – so if they need a little bit of time out or if they need to have straight one-to-one attention. Or sometimes they need to come in and be on their phones a little bit and have some music on.

 

Then as the group starts, we usually have a big check-in with everybody, see how everyone’s feeling. It’s really nice to hear if people want to share their news about the week, what they’ve been up to. Then we’ll do a warm-up and after the warm-up, we’ll usually get into whatever we’re working towards, whether it’s working towards a show: doing a bit of script work, getting into groups, and going through, practicing lines, rehearsal, movement with our groups. Then coming back together to share what we’ve done that week. Most sessions will end with some drama games which is really nice.

 

At the end of the session my role would be to go back to the door just to check in with parents, carers, families, about how the session’s gone. Give any feedback that might be needed. Just make sure the young person has had a really happy, lovely time at the group and also if anything has come up for them that they’re supported when they come home, so they’re not just left without that communication back with family and caregivers at home.

 

As we’re packing up the space we have a check-in again with the teams to see how everybody found the session. Usually, we have a think about what we’re going to do the next week, and put any deadlines in if we’re working towards a production or end-of-term sharing, This includes what sort of things we need to start preparing for, if that’s costumes, or printing, or scripts, if any communication is needed from me to go back to parents that following week. That’s when I’d usually make a few notes to make sure I know what to email during the week so everyone knows what we’re doing.

 

Do you have a proudest moment from working with HIT?

 

It’s my third year now working with the Stevenage group. And this summer just gone (Summer 2024) we did our first big production that I’ve been a part of at the Gordon Craig Theatre. Seeing that be devised literally from scratch in September, then worked towards that for a whole academic year was really amazing to be a part of. Seeing the development of the young people: their confidence really grew.

 

Actually seeing a show come from absolutely nothing to completely be led by their ideas and their imagination and their script writing and their movement ideas and choreography … that was – I was really proud of them. It was a big stage and a big audience and it was quite daunting for a lot of them but that was completely their own ideas and a moment to really celebrate them. So, I was really proud to be a part of that.

 

What opportunities have you had for development and training with HIT?

 

My first year of freelancing for HIT there was a training put on – the title of the training was ‘Dealing with Challenging Behaviour’ but on reflection, we’ve changed the title because we feel like challenging behaviour isn’t really the right word, it’s sort of just managing behaviour in general. It was the first time that I was able to think about the fact that everyone in the room, when you’re working with an inclusive practice, everybody does need to be treated the same, equally, but also it’s really vital to know what everybody needs and actually for everyone to have the space to get what they need from a session.

 

There were so many things that I found – practical things that the guy that led it spoke about, things that we could implement straight away into sessions if you were struggling with someone coming in and feeling dysregulated, or someone being quite disruptive, but actually wanting to make sure that that person didn’t need to leave the group, that they could be themselves but we could find ways to adapt sessions so other people still felt supported and they were able to be themselves.

 

I’ve worked for organisations before where you might give a child three, four weeks, and if they haven’t settled into the routine that we’re offering, then usually it’s a conversation with the parents that it’s not right for them, maybe they shouldn’t come back, because they’re disrupting other children. But the way we had this training, it was very much: ‘how can we work as a team to make sure we can adapt sessions so that we are really sticking to the fact that we are an inclusive organisation and everybody is welcome.’ And that’s a thing I definitely see across all the groups we work with: that there is no limit on who can attend a group. That was probably the most influential training and development we had.

 

I think, in general, when we do skill sharings, we meet other freelancers. That’s also just been such a lovely thing to be a part of, because – again, I’ve worked freelance for a lot of other organisations where you’re working by yourself. You might be going in and delivering a project and then just feeding back to whoever’s the manager about how the project’s gone. But with HIT it’s very collaborative – everybody’s ideas and input are welcome. And everybody’s training and background is very different, what they can offer… and I’ve learned a lot just from seeing other people deliver sessions or explain certain games they might lead or the language they might use and that’s really helped inform how I then run my own dance company and how I want freelancers who work for me to also learn from each other. But also how I then feedback to other organisations and try and let them see that it’s really positive to give time to make sure teams can check in with each other and learn from each other.

 

How has HIT grown your skills as a freelancer and personally?

 

Because my background is as a dancer, when I joined HIT I was conscious that I didn’t have any drama training. A lot of our other freelancers do have backgrounds from drama school or having that acting background – people are drawn to working with us because we’re a theatre company. So, I think it’s been nice – I’ve pushed myself in terms of learning about facilitating drama but also I feel like it’s been really nice to bring the dance aspect to it and let other people see the benefit of merging both artforms. So from a practitioner point of view, it has been really useful for me to see how to deliver drama as an artform, but also how to merge drama and dance as well.

 

How do you find working as part of a team with HIT (both the session teams and the wider HIT community)?

 

Well, I absolutely love it. I mean, honestly: everybody who works for HIT is amazing and it doesn’t feel like work most of the time when you turn up. It feels like you’re just able to hang out with people you really get on with. Obviously, you’re there to work and you do work, but it’s really fun. Maybe it’s because we’re an inclusive charity and because everything we do is participant-led and it’s about us being there to support the young people and their ideas, it’s not about us being performers or creatives in the work we’re doing, it’s about us using our skills to make sure they have the best time in a session.

 

Everyone that you work with has such different life experiences, and we’re all open about what we want to bring to a session, we’re open about sharing our ideas about what we think creatively, how things should look, but we’re very supportive of each other. I would say it’s very collaborative. All of the groups I’ve worked with for HIT – they’ve just been wonderful because everybody’s ideas are really welcomed.

 

If you are interested in freelancing for HIT, head to our Freelancers page, where you can find an application form. Or get in contact with the team via admin@hit-theatre.org.uk or 01727 221414 for an informal chat.