It was our final City Challenge event of the year at the Careers Service recently. We had the wonderful Brave Bold Drama join us with their challenge.
City Challenges are a programme of events providing students with the opportunity to engage with charities and social enterprises.
About Brave Bold Drama
Brave Bold Drama is led by two freelance artists who are working class and LGBTQI+ and believe people deserve high quality arts in their lives, even if they can’t pay. They make award-winning theatre for families and for those living with dementia and run a broad portfolio of community art projects made with and for working class communities.
Another key focus for the organisation is to bridge the story-telling gap for children. They believe that whilst young adult, teen and infant theatre is available, there is a lack of this for children of ages 7-13. Their plays and interactive theatre endeavour to reach that young audience, particularly in areas that aren’t accessing this easily.
Co-Artistic Director and Community Arts Producer, Gill Simmons explained to the students attending, “We believe children deserve the richness of their humanity to be reflected in their art. Our community art projects emerge organically and in response to demonstrable community need. We work with all ages within working class communities, as they are so often not given access to culture and the arts”.
The Challenge
After a more detailed explanation, the students were asked if they could think of times where they may have seen this lack of access to performing arts for a working class person. There were many hands in the air with examples and an agreement amongst all that there was work to be done here.
The students were asked to focus on the following:
How do we get people working in theatre to feel able to acknowledge the role their social / cultural privilege plays in their ability to work in the arts?
The groups were divided into two focus areas:
– the barriers of social and cultural privilege
– the barriers of freelance work pay and security
Outcomes
The three teams presented their ideas back to Gill at the end of the afternoon. There was a lot of lively discussion and shared ideas across the teams, showing that there is a real need for change in this area.
Suggestions included mentor schemes for those with privilege to team up with communities needing more support to allow their access to be shared, inclusive casting and production templates, working with schools and in education to get fairer access, and lots more.
Further information
If you are interested in helping Brave Bold Drama further, you can check out their work here. You can also sign up to become an “agent” and receive a monthly art case file to investigate from home!
We will be kicking off our next cycle of City Challenges in the Autumn term and would love to see you. More information can be found here.