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Guildford Shakespeare Company announces year-long programme of new outreach projects for 2018-19

3rd September 2018

Entitled ‘Brave New World’, the award-wining Guildford Shakespeare Company’s (GSC) year-long programme has been created to help affect social change across a number of different communities.

Brave New World is a year-long programme of outreach projects, which seeks to reduce social isolation and assist disadvantaged schools across Surrey. The six projects will engage with some 3,500 participants through direct contact with live theatre experiences, workshops and therapy sessions. Over £60,000 has been raised through charitable trusts and funds to deliver the programme.

Brave New World is designed to broaden cultural engagement, improve curriculum learning, reduce social isolation and provide help to those who need it most. Many of the projects are free-to-access pilot-programmes and will be thoroughly evaluated by the GSC team. By tracking participants’ progress before, during and after their involvement, GSC will be able to share their experiences with local authorities and charities to encourage further projects and continued provision in Surrey and across the UK.

“We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to benefit from the arts.” Explains Ant Stones, GSC’s Head of Education. “We created Brave New World to build on the work that we’re already doing with the most disadvantaged Surrey schools and expand into the community. Everyone at GSC is delighted that we’ll be working with a mix of generations, including 26 Surrey schools, a local care-home and families with children excluded from education.”

The six projects will include; The Play’s The Thing, touring productions of Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet to secondary schools; Delight in Shakespeare, an eight-week programme of performances and workshops for primary schools, exploring A Midsummer Night’s Dream; as well as two year-long residencies within Guildford schools (A Time for All Things and Speak The Speech). Work within the community includes; Spirit of Youth, an inter-generational project, taking primary school children into a local care-home; and With My Eyes, a 12-week course providing drama-therapy for children excluded from education and their parents.

GSC’s Co-Founder Sarah Gobran: “The transformative power theatre can be a huge driver for social change: opening doors to new ideas, building confidence, enabling people to find their voice; the list is endless. Enriching the lives of those we engage with has always been central to our ethos, so we are absolutely thrilled that these projects, many of which have been on our wish list for some time, are coming to fruition.”

Brave New World has been made possible through the support of Delight Charity, The Geoff Herrington Foundation, The Guildford Community Grants Scheme, The Guildford Poyle Charities, Natwest’s Skills and Opportunities Fund, The Wrentham Trust, The Community Foundation for Surrey, The Big Lottery Fund and Guildford Poyle Charities.

For more details about the Brave New World projects, visit the Outreach pages of the website (www.guildford-shakespeare-company.co.uk), or contact Ant Stones, GSC’s Head of Education, on 01483 301590, education@guildford-shakespeare-company.co.uk.