Creative Learning: Education

This is the work in communities outside of formal education and includes life-long learning. Our Creative Learning Team work with groups of any age, culture and ability from around the region to explore a cross art form approach to theatre.

We tailor workshops, projects and residencies for each group and respond to the participants needs and desires in creating theatre. We often collaborate with other organisations in funding or delivering the work, using artists and practitioners who are expert in their field.

Current Projects include:

A Local Hospice:  Forest Forge has been running a weekly drama session at a local hospice since 1997.  The sessions offer patients the chance to work together and be inspired, and invigorated. The sessions allow the individual to ‘play’ and ‘create’ in a way they may not have done for years, which is a real liberation for them. The work increases self-esteem and confidence at a time in many of their lives when they may be feeling worn out and of little use to society.

We have many wonderful examples of this work, including one participant describing the workshops as “a chance to remove the strait jacket”. 

Adults with Special Needs:  Every week Forest Forge works with a group of Adults with Special Needs from Brockenhurst College, during term time.  The sessions involve a number of drama activities and lead to a performance at the end of the summer term

Elevate:  An annual project working with secondary schools in the New Forest as part of their work experience.  Selected students join Forest Forge for two weeks in the summer and become their own theatre company.  They create a play based around an issue (knife crime in 2009, alcohol in 2010 and teenage pregnancy in 2011), which then tour for free to local schools and pupil referral units.

In 2010 Elevate was funded by Hampshire Police, Hampshire Youth Opportunities Fund and a councillor grant from Cllr Dr Miranda Whitehead

Celebrate!Andover:  An intergenerational project based in Andover.  Forest Forge work with secondary schools and groups of elders to create an exciting, multi-media, inter-generational performance project. Students from Winton and Harrow Way Schools in Andover are working on drama performance, script writing, set design and construction, film and dance as well as website design. The piece looks at the theme of Celebration from the perspectives of youth and age. An important element of the project is ‘legacy’, looking at creating learning tools that enable future students to use reminiscence as a community resource.

Celebrate! Andover is funded by Creative Partnerships and test Valley Borough Council

When We Were Thirty:  When We Were Thirty brings together elderly people in the New Forest to look back at the year they turned 30. This is a year-long project working with elderly and isolated people in the Forest to give them the chance to recall, share and celebrate moments in their lives, feel creative and build closer links with other people around them, through drama.  Their stories will be brought together in a performance that will tour to residential homes and will have a public performance in July 2011.

The project is funded by the Herbert and Peter Blagrave Foundation.

Wooden Tony:  A project working with families with children with autism in Hampshire.  The project has seen writer Richard Conlon work with families in creative sessions and conversations to explore the issues surrounding living with autism.  Richard is currently writing a play based on these experiences and on the Victorian novella Wooden Tony – that covers some of the issues.  The final 50 minute play will be available for free to schools.  The project has been funded by Inspiring You through Hampshire County Council. 

Forest Forge hope to be able to develop this idea and the script into a full length professional play in the future.

Hidden Identities:  Forest Forge is currently applying for funds to help run a project with the Romany and Gypsy traveller communities in Bransgore in the New Forest.  The company have worked with these groups before and are responding to the communities desire for a regular drama club for young people.

Past Projects Include:  A project funded by Age Concern Southampton bringing together groups from the Black Heritage Centre and Vedic Temple in Southampton to create and present plays about their experiences;  PUSH 3 – giving young families the chance to explore their environment in creative workshops; Find Your Talent- Push project collaborating with Mount Pleasant Media Workshop; The Time Traveller – an intergenerational project in Andover; Nayee Kahani - a play written by the Asian Women from The Suhana Centre and Age Concern in Southampton and performed at the Nuffield.

If you have a project you want to get off the ground, or you are part of a group who would like to work with us, please contact the Creative Learning Director on lucy@forestforge.co.uk, or the Community Theatre Officer on lisa@forestforge.co.uk