Trustees’ Week: Delia Lee on Zenith Youth Theatre

For Trustees’ Week 2023, we caught up with Delia Lee, Stone King’s Knowledge and Learning Coordinator, who has volunteered with Zenith Youth Theatre Company since 2000 and, since it became a charity seven years ago, is now the chair of trustees.

“My passion is theatre,” said Delia, “I went to a theatre school, so I just love the work I do with Zenith – I’m the choreographer as well as the chair of the trustees.”

On average, Delia spends at least one evening a week with Zenith, however, in the run-up to a production, her volunteered time increases significantly.

“This summer, I did a week at the Edinburgh Fringe with Zenith,” she said. We took four groups of 13- to 18-year-olds – 38 of them in total – and each performed one show a day. We had two groups performing musicals – A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and The Theory of Relativity – while another did Dreams of Anne Frank, which was aimed at school-age children who might be studying the famous diary. The final group performed The Twits, which was widely enjoyed by pre-school children and their families. All the shows were finished by midday, so the young people had free time in the afternoon and then we took them to see other productions. We took them to roughly two productions a day, so it was a whole week completely immersed in theatre. We saw comedy, circus acts, drama, musicals, drag queens, everything, just a complete mixture.

“It was all pretty good fun, to be honest, tiring, but good fun. The young people are very appreciative; we had lots of lovely messages when we got back about how much they enjoyed it.”

As well as a yearly CSR day from Stone King LLP, the Stone King Foundation has supported Delia’s long-term commitment to Zenith. 

“The foundation has given Zenith £500 towards Project Pop-Up. It’s Zenith’s 60th anniversary this year and one of the things that we did was buy equipment so that we could put a theatre anywhere. There aren’t that many theatre spaces in Bath, but there are a lot of theatre groups and a lot of empty shops and buildings. So, we wanted to have all our own lighting and sound and everything, allowing us to create a theatre in an empty shop, an empty office, outdoors, and to do a production wherever we wanted. It’s been a real game-changer for us and we really appreciate the foundation’s generous contribution.”

Along with her love of all things theatre, Delia said of her reasons for giving so much of her time to volunteering with Zenith saying: “It’s paying it back really, and teaching young people the joy of theatre. There’s no audition to join, absolutely everyone’s welcome. Some of the children do go into theatre professionally in later life, which is wonderful, but it’s also so rewarding to just see their confidence coming on leaps and bounds and them developing lifelong friendships. Once you start, it’s very difficult to leave, because it’s so lovely being around them, they’re so enthusiastic and that’s why I love doing it.”

Stone King’s ethos is firmly rooted in doing the right thing, for its clients, people, community and the environment. That’s why each Stone King employee receives one corporate social responsibility (CSR) day a year, on top of their annual leave allowance, to volunteer or raise money for a charity or social enterprise of their choice.

Each year, the breadth of activities chosen by Stone King’s people is vast. From sponsored walks and cycles to sorting donations at local food banks and volunteering at community gardening projects, some are already engaged in regular volunteer work and use their CSR day to contribute to this, while others spend their time differently each year.

A number of Stone King lawyers are also charity trustees. Find out more about their roles and the charities they work with in our article: Celebrating Charity Trustees.