Christmas film: Da Elves an da Oo-makker

ALICE Theatre Project is a local social enterprise in Shetland specialising in creative theatre. We primarily work with children aged from 4 to 12 alongside a dedicated team of young volunteers. Creative music and theatre classes are held each Saturday through term time and we regularly have in excess of 100 registered performers attending each week.

We specialise in devising theatre, harnessing the creative imaginations of our young performers to create new contemporary theatre work. All our activities follow our key values: Celebrate Diversity; Embrace Curiosity; Nurture Bravery and Cultivate Joy and our latest project was no exception!

In November 2025 we were excited to have an opportunity to work with Promote Shetland and Shetland ForWirds on a festive collaboration which would spread festive cheer in our community and farther afield.

We began working with writer Bruce Eunson to translate a festive tale into Shaetlan with a few other local twists along the way. The Elves and the Shoemaker became ‘Da Elves an da Oo-makker’ . Inspired by our local culture and the Shetland wool industry we turned this traditional tale upside down. Elves became ooricks, peerie fokk, or trows, and the shoes became woolly keps!

In classes we shared our festive tale and asked our young performers how they would like to create the story. Each of our four theatre classes took on a part of the story to create, our youngest company the Rabbits (P1-2) were cast as (very energetic!) sheep, Hatters Company (P3-4) became the family of Oo-makkers, Cats company (P5-6) became the peerie fokk and our Hearts Company (P7-S1) took on the role of storytellers and action makers.

All our young performers were involved in the creative vision and set design, and all of this across only one Saturday afternoon in advance of filming!

The Promote Shetland team and Bruce from Shetland ForWirds worked with the creations to bring them to life on screen in a class session that will go down as a highlight for us for years to come. Each and every student was involved, supported and had a wonderful time creating this beautiful film.

For me personally I am in awe how the film managed to showcase exactly how I see each and every class with ALICE Theatre Project. I feel like the lens is looking through my eyes to see the joy, confidence and wonder in our young performers as they turn their imaginations into reality. What a beautiful gift.

It has been a particularly important part of this collaboration to work with Shetland ForWirds in promoting the use of Shaetlan in our young community. I remember several years ago I had two siblings in our class who were struggling with confidence.

This happens sometimes with young performers - we are no strangers to supporting young people to find their voice. On this occasion, however, that voice was needing a Shaetlan outlet. During this time, Bruce came along to our classes to support a creative theatre piece for our annual show to include Shaetlan. We were having fun experimenting with language and suddenly the two siblings came to life. I had no idea Shaetlan was their first language until this moment. They not only shone in this creative process, but took the lead and wrote a piece for our show that year.

This moment, and all the work we have done together since has brought home to me the importance of supporting the development of our natural language within our classes as a key part of supporting our young students to find their self-confidence, find their voice and celebrate their unique identity.

We are delighted now to work with Promote Shetland to share this important part of our work with you. We would encourage anyone who is keen to promote Shaetlan to get in touch with Shetland ForWirds who have an open, innovative and creative approach to working with organisations and artists alike.

Thank you to Promote Shetland and Shetland ForWirds for this creative collaboration. We can’t wait to share this wonderful film with you all and bring you into our ALICE world which is full of diversity, bravery, curiosity and most of all…joy!

If you have a budding young performer at home who would like to get involved in ALICE Theatre Project, we will be accepting bookings in the new year. We have limited spaces and they are allocated on a first come first served basis. Please head to www.alicetheatreproject.com and we will be in touch if or when a space becomes available.

Watch 'Da Elves an da Oo-makker' on YouTube now.