In 2010 Burnley Youth Theatre formed a repertory company Byteback Theatre and began an annual tradition of taking a new piece of theatre to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Young people took part in exchanges with national and international youth arts groups as part of the ARROW / INDRA congress including trips to Plymouth in 2010 and Derry in 2011.
There was a reunion party for the demolition of the Quarry Theatre (also known as The Blue Building) in 2013 to make space for a second building on site which opened in 2014. The new building was named The Moira Preston building in recognition of a volunteer who gave 40 years of her life to Burnley Youth Theatre.
The Outreach and Education work of the youth theatre flourished and workshops, projects and events took place in community settings and schools across Burnley. Many short films and issue based theatre pieces were created in this decade to educate young people including Cut Short (Knife Crime), Bound to My Culture (forced marriage), After The Rain (LGBTQ+) and The Only One in the World (child sexual exploitation).
The decade brought a new programme of professional theatre
to Burnley Youth Theatre’s stage with performances by Shakespeare’s Globe, Little Angel and Half Moon Theatre. After a damaging flood in 2018, Sir Ian McKellen reopened Burnley Youth Theatre in 2019 and performed his one man show Ian McKellen On Stage to sold out audiences.
