Paul Roseby is the Artistic Director of the National Youth Theatre, one of our first online partners at IdeasTap. Here, he talks about the direction he wants NYT to take, and reflects on a year when the recession started to bite.

Artists should never slop around in loads of extra cash. It makes them lazy. There's something about stress in the marketplace which can create better work in the artistic fields. Having said that, we're all under threat and we're all feeling vulnerable because our regular funding streams are drying up. All arts charities will be victims of the recession, including us.

It's not just about people having cold hard cash again, it's also about confidence. We're living in uncertain times, people hold on to any extra cash. NYT have lost about £200,000 of funding this year. To get through the next few years we'll have to continue to be inventive. We can't afford to stand still.

We've got lots of ideas for the company over the next three years; many of them are incredibly challenging and certainly not cheap, but they will open up new pathways for us and make a real difference in young people's lives. We won't let the recession stop us from thinking big. As long as we remain inventive and ambitious I think we'll be OK.

In 2010 we'll start our environmental trilogy, which is a three year programme in which we'll work with artists and performers to highlight issues around the changing environment. Art and the environment are just becoming bedfellows and we want to think creatively about how they can work for each other in innovative and entertaining ways. The first part of the trilogy will be a mass participation project called S'warm with over 1,000 performers.

Next year we'll also be premiering a fantastic new play up in Glasgow, using IdeasTap to search for new writers for our summer season and staging our epic cooking drama Relish. We're really proud of our social inclusion work and that will continue with our Playing Up drop-in sessions around the UK.

The Techno Stories project is open for applications on IdeasTap at the moment and early next year we'll hold a series of workshops around the UK where IdeasTap members can help us come up with ideas about how to use cutting edge technology to create interactive performance. We want to work out how modern technology can enhance the performing arts. I'm hoping that we'll gather a series of innovative young minds who can grow with us, technically, digitally, and theatrically.

This is just the beginning of our partnership with IdeasTap. We're just finding our way together and I think great things will come from it. Right now we're seeing the culmination of one of our biggest co-projects as 18 of our member are currently in Dubai for the opening and closing ceremonies of the FIFA Club World Cup.

We're also in the process of co-creating an online drama series as a result of the Write Space project which happened earlier this year. That's a brilliant because it has involved IdeasTap members in so many ways. We had two groups of people learning to create online drama, and we asked all of the members to vote for their favourite idea. We're seeing that idea come to fruition with Casino 52 which is being filmed as we speak and which will appear on IdeasTap shortly.

As always, our alumni have had another great year. Matt Smith is the new Doctor Who, Antonia Thomas just left the company this summer and now she's in Misfits on BBC3, Zawe Ashton is starring in the new St Trinians movie, Reece Ritchie has been in Hollywood filming The Lovely Bones, Danny Kirrane starred in the Royal Court's Jerusalem, which is transferring to the West End, and of course Daniel Craig starred on Broadway opposite Hugh Jackman in the biggest grossing play on record. There's been a lot of good news for our alumni and we hope it keeps coming.

Paul Roseby was talking to Katie Jackson