
IPT - End of Year Review
Islington People’s Theatre – 2022, a year in review
I’m incredibly proud of the work done for this first year of Islington People’s Theatre. I’ve learnt so much about running a new company single-handedly and creating & producing the projects. It’s certainly been both tough & challenging, but I believe the benefits for the participants involved has been amazing - so that’s worth it all!
The company’s first project was a re-worked version of RECOVERIST THEATRE PROJECT created during my MA in Applied Theatre @ Central in 2017. Supported by Eagle Recovery Project & Better Lives, the 2022 version offered the recovery community the opportunity to engage with a range of creative activities including; applied theatre, creative writing, moving recovery, chanting, forum theatre and activist theatre. The project engaged 30 adults from within the borough of Islington and ended with a sharing of a piece devised by the group at Southwark Playhouse in July 2022.
The second IPT project – SHEROES was a co-production with Response Ability Theatre and was awarded Arts Council funding. I created this project to explore women’s stories with marginalised women working with Pause Islington. The project was based on Clarissa Pinkola Estes’s book ‘Women Who Run With The Wolves’, engaging the women with folk tales, mythology and allegory to find their authentic voice and tell their own story. The project ended with a promenade multi-arts sharing at The Ecology Centre in October 2022. Pause were delighted with the response of the women who took part, and those who came to the sharing and want to extend our working relationship in 2023.
I’m looking forward to see what IPT can create and achieve in 2023, following its vision of working with applied theatre and creative practices to work with community and marginalised groups for personal, social and political change. We need this work more than ever, finding our voices to challenge the increasing inequality in the UK & will be establishing the work further with other community groups within the borough over the next year.
I would like to give a big thanks to our funders this year – Cripplegate Foundation, Islington Council & The Arts Council, all the talented freelance practitioners who worked on the projects and of course to all our participants with whom we co-created the work and who brought their hearts, minds and creativity to the process...
Happy New Year & Solidarity to you all. Here’s to 2023!
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