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The Yorkshire Academy of Film & Television Acting LTD (YAFTA) was founded by Charlotte Armitage in 2013. The organisation began by offering evening classes in Leeds. The success of these classes soon enabled the business to expand into locations across Yorkshire.
YAFTA has run after school clubs in various schools across the region and offered adapted programmes for actors with learning disabilities. YAFTA has had fantastic success with it’s students, one of which became the first actor with a disability to win a National Television Award in 2018 for his role as Ryan Stocks in Emmerdale. Many students have gone on to have roles in all the major soaps and dramas that have been produced in the UK. You can find out more about YAFTA Talent Agency here: www.yafta.tv.
Charlotte Armitage is a registered psychotherapist and business psychologist. Her skillset in this area, in addition to input from the teaching team at YAFTA led to the development of an 18 month diploma programme which successfully develops aspiring actors into professional working actors.
Throughout COVID19, YAFTA created a 12 month Online Diploma programme which has made YAFTA’s training accessible worldwide. These courses have attracted students from across the world in locations such as Dubai, Jamaica, Australia and China.
Through research conducted at YAFTA and through Charlotte’s doctoral research, which explored the experiences of on-screen performers, we started to be able to scientifically quantify what we already knew anecdotally about the benefits of acting for screen. It is this knowledge and experience which has led to the evolution of The YAFTA Project.
Charlotte is passionate about the importance of supporting mental health in children. She firmly believes that offering preventative measures in childhood are the most effective way of tackling the mental health epidemic that we see today.
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Charlotte ARMITAGE
BSc (Hons), PG Cert, MBPsS, PPABP, FRSA, MBACP, MCNS (Accred),
Managing Director , Psychologist and Registered Psychotherapist:
“At YAFTA we are passionate about the importance of supporting mental health in children. As a society, we tend to think that children are resilient but in reality, their minds are very vulnerable. We only think that they are resilient because they don’t express their emotions in the same way that an adult would. Instead children absorb their upset and worries, which ultimately become the seeds of mental illness that grow and develop with the child into adulthood. If we don’t support the mental health of children, we cannot expect to build a society of secure, healthily functioning adults who are able to have secure, respectful, relationships with others, are able to maintain a career, and are able to use healthy coping strategies to cope with the demands of life. Attempting to address mental health problems in adulthood is much less effective than preventing and processing them in childhood. Prevention is better than the cure. That’s why I am so passionate about The YAFTA Project.”
If you are interested in offering YAFTA Acting Classes in your school, please contact us.
We look forward to hearing from you.
The YAFTA Project is a limited company registered in England and Wales. Company number: 13338084
