Fierce Talent

How often do campaigns voice the actual concerns, the authentic life experiences, the honest thoughts and words of the people being spoken to or about?

Fierce Talent is what happens when a creative idea and a social concern meet the creative drive of over 30 young people in Peterborough, who were asked what creativity meant to them, and what that message should look and feel like.

Read more about this commission.

IMM Rap Therapy

This project used intergenerational music and rap to support and inspire both the younger and older generations, opening a door into communication, understanding, confidence and community by offering a platform where they will be heard and respected. The project drew upon current societal issues, highlighting the power music and rap has in providing agency to difficult feelings and emotions.

Read more about this commission.

Play the Part: Youth Advocates

This project aimed to inspire local youth action and help young people deal with the social and emotional issues they are experiencing as a result of COVID-19. Over the past few months, Blue Orange Arts have partnered students from Handsworth Association of Schools with high quality performing arts practitioners, collaborating with children aged 13-16 through workshops to create theatre from their own experiences and empower their collective voice.

Read more about this commission.

What would you like to keep?

Our project for DISRUPT is just beginning ... so come share our 'Work in Progress" short film which gives a flavour of what will unfold. Through creativity we are working with young people to reflect on the losses and gains from this pandemic. What new ways of working, what skills what relationships do we value . So as we move into recovery ..What would you like to keep ?

The Breakfast Club and Magpie Project

Over 5 sessions on Zoom, Magpie mums and their children worked with members of the Breakfast Club quartet to explore what brings us joy, comfort and serenity. We took walks, creating maps of our journeys and remembered and imagined places that we like to go, sounds that we hear and words that bring us comfort. We sang songs and danced together, created music and movements and shared our experiences, feelings and reflections.

The materials we share here are imprints or artefacts and we invite you to see it as embedded in a context, time, and set of relationships. As glimpses of our intimate creative process, love letters between a family/community forced to be apart, traces of journeys that we went on together, snapshots of a period of time which has already passed.

Read more about this commission.

Mummy Vs

Content warning: contains strong language, mentions of post-natal depression and mental illness. Not suitable for U18s.

If the first year of a child’s life is so important, what effect does it have if this happens in a global pandemic? During lockdown, in the UK cases of post-natal depression increased by 300% as new parents found their expectations turned upside down. Mummy Vs is a show that examines the effect of COVID on the childcare crisis and the pressures on new parents, bringing the domestic to life in the spectacular nature of a wrestling show.

Using interviews with other parents, artist Heather Bandenburg shares her journey through the first year of motherhood and the battles she has fought in her head within the backdrop of lockdown Britain.

Read more about this commission.

Have some feedback? Please fill out this form.

Headway East x Barbican

Series: Other Complete World
Episode 1: this went through my body 

Other Complete World is an audio series made at Headway East London, a creative community for survivors of brain injury in Hackney, in collaboration with the Barbican Centre. The series invites neurodiverse artists and thinkers into conversation with other figures in the worlds of arts and creativity. Through these connections, we want to get closer to the meaning of culture and the worlds we share. 

Three episodes will be released over the coming year. The first, this went through my body, explores art, identity and why we make, 

Contributors: Paul, Billy, Jess & Mike  
Music: Music About Thinking About Things by Lai-Kwan  
Produced by: Bryn   

The Feedback Machine

The Feedback Machine is an innovative online platform in development which provides feedback and support to writers at all levels.

The project is designed to provide a way of allowing Margate Bookie a way to continue connection with the communities they have created over the last five years. The project also aims to combat individual and artistic isolation through facilitating creative support networks, and build transferable writing, communication and negotiation skills among participants through giving and receiving constructive critical feedback, ultimately helping to tackle unemployment and underemployment in Kent.

Read more about this commission.

Talking about my generation

Ignite Imaginations and Maya Productions are proud to present Talking About My Generation, a community project inspired by Maya Productions’ newest show in development Benny and the Greycats; the story of a family of Anglo-Indian musicians who swap playing in swing bands in South India to pursue a new life in the steel city of Sheffield. 

Led by outstanding artists Laura Page and Charu Asthana, the project brought together two groups of women aged over 50 from Roshni (Sheffield Asian Women’s Resource Centre) to participate in a course of creative workshops to express their memories of the sixties, journeys of migration and the music of the time.  

Read more about this commission.

Benny and The Grey Cats

Inspired by Artistic Director Suzanne Gorman’s and composer Mike Gorman’s family history, Benny and the Greycats is Maya Productions’ new musical in development. It tells the story of an Anglo-Indian family, railway workers and musicians, who swap playing in swing bands in South India to pursue a new life in the steel city of Sheffield in the 1960s.

This work-in-progress performance premiered at DISRUPT ’21.

We’ll Be in Touch

We’ll Be in Touch is a unique project that developed in response to the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021. Following training, volunteers from Manchester’s Royal Exchange Elders Company led creative phone calls with participants from Together Dementia Support. These weekly telephone calls have resulted in the creation of poetry, which has then been shared online. 

We’ll be in Touch is a short film that explores the project and the positive effects this has had on participants and volunteers alike over the last year.

Read more about this commission.

WOMANEWER

Trigger warning: Contains themes of domestic abuse and violence 

Laura Kenyon and Centre 151 are proud to present WOMANEWER, a film and discussion about dealing with past trauma through movement. Throughout weeks of research and development, WOMANEWER has worked with survivors of abuse from Centre 151, creating a safe space for participants to be heard, share their experiences and get support whilst engaging in improvisation and movement based tasks. Through a series of creative tasks and interviews, women are given artistic tools to express past trauma, feel empowered and build a global community. In the discussion that follows, the participants and the WOMANEWER team dive into the impact of this project and the importance of providing safe spaces for exploration and exchange.

Read more about this commission.

I love you, sunshine

Trigger warning: Contains themes of suicide

With the pandemic having huge impacts on isolation and mental health, theatre company Rhubarb Theatre were commissioned to work with local mental health charity Green Synergy and author Addy Farmer to create resources to help change the perception of poor mental health and break the stigma around suicidal thoughts.

The project takes inspiration from a children’s book written by Addy Farmer called I love you, sunshine, about a child who suffers the loss of her father when he takes his own life and the huge impact this has on her wellbeing and outlook.

Read more about this commission.

The community, the state and a specific kind of headache

This text from The White Pube explores community arts activity; how can the arts serve communities, or meaningfully address the idea of locality. What are the challenges that emerge when working at a more precarious grassroots?