Our 4 main aims in terms of all our work:

Maintain an ethos of care: Look after and take care of our participants, audiences and staff. Emulate best practice working with vulnerable people.

Tell authentic stories: Representing, not presenting. Making challenging subjects accessible.

Change minds and influence people: Positively challenge prejudice; influence systems and society; improve individuals’ self esteem.

Continue to take artistic risks: Telling stories of under-represented and marginalised communities while empowering them to be at the heart of the process. Experimenting with new forms and style.

Key things about our process when we are making a new show/event:

Long Term – we build relationships with our co-creators over at least a year (many of our projects go much longer).

Building Trust – is key (through the ethos of care in facilitation, through taking time, through conversation and listening.)

Equality in the room – we are all there as equals and experts in different areas whatever our job, age, whether a professional artist or community member (our artistic specialisms, our unique life experiences all are valued equally)

Language – Doing our best to find the right language. Eg: A person who is seeking sanctuary - An acknowledgement ‘asylum seeker’ or ‘refugee’ is not an identity, it is not a person it is a situation someone finds themselves in.

Sharing Stories - We don’t ask people directly for their stories unless or until they offer or it naturally occurs through the work. (especially in the case of people within the asylum process who are being asked to recount their story constantly – often not being believed, they are asked to re-live their trauma and provide evidence)

Frame of reference – when working with people who may have no or limited experience of theatre it is important to give them a frame of reference. Eg: We invite people to the theatre as a social/ cultural experience to get to know each other and to get to know what theatre is and can be before asking the group if they want to be involved in making it.

Hold the uncompromising belief that theatre is for everyone – Many people don’t believe it is for them. So we take people to the theatre, as many different shows as we can until they feel comfortable and believe they belong. We challenge venues to consider barriers and tell them how to be welcoming to our groups.

Authenticity – Deep research or working with people’s actual voices. We use verbatim testimony a lot in our work or work with writers who are attached to the project to conduct research and get to know co-creators from very early stages of a process.

Food – eating together is a huge part of our work, its social, nourishing and where the best conversations happen.

Fun – We take having fun very seriously!

Starting a project:

Getting the right team - We always include people with lived experience of whatever we are exploring in our projects. eg: a writer with experience of living in care, a facilitator with lived experience of seeking sanctuary. On every project we work with associate artists we know and trust AND always bring new people in to each creative team.

Finding the right non- arts partners (local authority services, other charities, etc)

Finding the right allies within those partner organisations – the people who really get it, who are passionate about it

Hang out in the right places – go where people are, we don’t expect them to come to us. Eg: hanging out at refugee gardening projects, in multilingual libraries, at conversation groups, at community centres and support agencies. Taking our Curious Caravan to communities and meeting people on their doorsteps.

Workshops:

We run creative workshops with our co-creators to understand the theatre making process whilst also gaining more confidence, self-esteem, friends, consistency, language.

Some exercises/ techniques we use:

Checking in/ checking out in sessions

Drama games/exercises – using improvisation/ice breakers/ story telling exercises

Verbatim exercises – ways in to talking about ourselves (bring an object/ tell the story of your name/use words on cards as a stimulus in small groups)

Using fiction as a stimulus (eg: children/teenage literature. Exploring characters and moments in other stories as a distancing tool to start discussions around certain themes/topics that resonate with the lives of people in the room)

Story sharing – We offer stories at the Curious Caravan and if people want to share one with us, we listen. We always have safe stimulus words or phrases on cards to get people inspired.

Movement/ Dance (non- verbal physical sessions are very effective working with a group people where there is a variety of languages in the room)

Creative Writing (we have created a book with the Arriving group – at the point they were really keen to share some of their own stories/poetry/recipes)

Image work – using bodies to create through physical story telling

Using music whilst doing a creative activity

Photography – something we’ve touched on more recently in lockdown – 3 minute photo challenges on smart phones of beauty in our surroundings.

Specialist artists – we bring in artists to share skills in various specialisms eg: singing, sound design, mime, AV, set/costume design. Often these creatives will be part of the team making a show with us and there will be opportunities to shadow them.

Making the thing:

Have the right artists on board – people who are willing to be part of the group, who can communicate and collaborate.

Involve co-creators in as many aspects as is feasible in the process. eg: research, moments of sharing in R and D, reading/viewing drafts, individuals shadowing professionals, in rehearsals, at the dress rehearsal and the premier.

Or in some projects – flip the scale of agency entirely and be led by the community members ideas to design events. eg: The Happiness Project and Care about Care? 2021.

Making sure the right people see/ experience it:

People who can see their story or stories they recognise being represented, validation it matters, they matter.

People who may hold opinions about people different from them. Those that hold prejudice (including unconscious biases)

People who can influence or make change eg: people within systems, decision makers

Work with these people to identify and discover what the barriers that prevent people attending are, do all you can to break down the barriers OR find ways to take it to them eg: 360 film or our Curious Caravan is way more portable than theatre in a theatre building, exploring digital and pop up further will really help us to realise this.

Co-Creators:

Keep in Touch - We try to keep the people (our co-creators) with us for the journey, maintain long relationships and once the thing is made, there is truly a frame of reference. They can see the results of their investment, so now people are in a position to make informed choices about what they want to do next, to learn more about, to develop further.

Let it Evolve - Being open to what projects evolve out of it and to individuals who have the ambition to further their own creative practise and how we can support that.

Partners and Change-makers:

Empathy - We believe the power of experiencing stories and art and particularly the power of being in someone elses’ shoes through this experience leads to empathy, and that moment of feeling empathy is the moment to capitalise on to encourage people to pledge to take action – on a tiny scale or a systemic level – or the first step towards this.

Call to action - With some projects we have events/ symposiums/ open space discussions or other means to document what actions/ change people can pledge to make in their own lives or within their professional capacity.

Hold people accountable - We are working with researchers on some projects to better track the impact of our work in some settings by keeping in touch with partners and tracking what happens as a result of experiencing the work and saying they will do the thing – how do we hold them accountable. eg: the 360 film project in the care system has a researcher attached who will track and analyse the impact through using the films in local authority training workshops delivered by young people involved with Curious Monkey.