Welcome Back!

Well its been 7 months since Patricia last clocked in. While the others have pursued panto, physical theatre and divine works of contemporary dance collaborations and started Masters degrees,  in brief,  those 7 months for me have been spent mostly in my studio under a blanket, with a hot water bottle and only a cat for company as I have worked tirelessly to try and secure funding to take The women’s project forward. Together with the very soon mum to be Lisa Davis of Changing Relations we were delighted to finally here in April that it was all worth it. Arts Council England have agreed to grant us enough money to get the project on its feet again and we are all keeping fingers and toes crossed for similar success from other funding bodies.

I met the group last September just as the project was entering it’s performance phase. I was hired to support Robyn Hambrook on production design and quickly became part of the creative family supporting community participants with their transition from story tellers to performers with some textile wordplay to dress the set and help some of us make sense of some of the difficulties faced by our brave women who shared their experiences along the way.

As my first job as a freelancer since leaving 5 years working in education teaching and heading up the Art department in a Secondary school it didn’t take me long to realise I had made the right decision to sell up, leave the security of my previous job and start a new journey hoping to help people make a positive change in their life through the exploration and involvement in creative practice.

Through the exchanged shared experiences of women, strangers, friends old and new I was able to make a difference to people’s lives, in real time and in real places and it is the words that were  left unspoken that have kept me focused through these last hard and often self doubting months.

I can’t wait to see the project unfold over the next few months and share with you our progress as we develop creative workshops and a new piece of original theatre to be performed at the end of summer/start of Autumn 2015.

Please keep updated via our website,  facebook or  twitter and email accounts to see exciting updates and announcements from our artists, partners and guests.

Polly (Project Co-ordinator)