Liverpool Hope Theatre Company
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Forgotten Futures and The City
The Stride Project: Arts for Prisons
Written by: Cathryn Murray
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Liverpool Hope Theatre Company
What is The Stride project and how does it relate to Forgotten Futures and the City?
Forgotten Futures And The City, was a project originally created to work with people living with dementia who reside in care homes but it has now expanded to work with other demographics. The company delivers Forgotten Futures and the City: The Stride project in prisons, through a week long intensive course packed with varying art forms. The participants are invited to draw on their own creativity and visions to think about the future in a forward thinking way. They are also given the opportunity to create their own Utopian city that they would ideally like to live in. They create a manifesto that allows them to think about the world they would like to be a part of and how they can have a positive role to play and impact upon the city. Through this learners will open up their minds and allow themselves to think beyond where they are now and how they can actively achieve where they want to be.
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Liverpool Hope Theatre Company
The Company’s Aims and Objectives.
Liverpool Hope Theatre Company strive to provide engaging and innovative workshops. This creative exploration invites learners to open their personal creativity and develop team working skills to create new and insightful work, allowing them to strive for a better future for themselves and their families and where they want to be in the future. The project is specifically designed to ensure that learners feel that they are not only defined by their past actions, but they have a real ability to contribute positively to society in the future. In short, their futures are most definitely not forgotten, once they are confident enough to recognise the positive, active role they can play.
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Liverpool Hope Theatre Company
Benefits of the Arts in a Prison Environment
The use of arts in a prison environment allow the learners to:
- Gain new skills
- Find new passions
- Discover their strengths
- Think about their aspirations
- Develop constructive criticism
- Demonstrate improvements
- Gain confidence
- Work in teams
Through discovering their strengths and having these and their talents acknowledged it helps to build confidence in the participants’ abilities. Through working as a team as well as individually, the participants build up trust and it helps to develop their creativity as they explore ideas and gain praise from each other as well as the facilitators.
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Liverpool Hope Theatre Company
Feedback
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Liverpool Hope Theatre Company
Feedback
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Liverpool Hope Theatre Company
Who is the project suitable for?
This project can be easily tailored to fit any age, gender or groups within a prison setting. The daily workshops are all self-contained so they are flexible to accomodate your needs and any time period required. The workshops are designed to provoke and encourage creativity thus leading to varying outcomes depending on the group or circumstance.
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Liverpool Hope Theatre Company
Who is Liverpool Hope Theatre Company?
Liverpool Hope Theatre Company was established in 2012 created by Dr Niamh Malone. Her objective was to work with recent graduates from Liverpool Hope University on a variety of community based theatre projects and specialise in using applied theatre to work towards social change. The company works alongside Forgotten Futures and the City to help different groups of individuals think about their futures, whilst encouraging them to think about the future of Liverpool. One important group the company works with are residents living with dementia within nursing homes, as well as delivering bespoke workshops in schools, prisons and community centres.
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Liverpool Hope Theatre Company
Meet the 2020 Company.
Far Left- Cathryn Murray (BA) graduated from Liverpool Hope University in 2019 with a BA in Drama. Prior to this Cathryn has worked on multiple projects in many different fields and trained at the Derby Academy of Acting from 2015-2016. She has a particular passion for directing and producing. In mid 2019 she directed and produced a workshopped production of The Effect and in December 2017 directed and co-wrote an original cabaret production called Send in the Clowns. In the future Cathryn hopes to continue working in the arts industry through a directing and producing pathway.
Middle- Martin Damitrov (BA) graduated from Liverpool Hope University in 2019 with a BA in Drama. Prior to his studies Martin used to be a workshop coordinator for a local Drama group. During and after his studies, he has been involved in multiple theatre and film projects as an actor and director. His latest work includes directing a theatre play, as part of the Camden Fringe Festival in London, that concentrated on the depths of the human psyche and raised important questions in regards to the debate of nature vs. nurture.
Far Right- Katherine Myers (BA) graduated from Liverpool Hope University in 2018 with a BA in Drama and Theatre Studies. She then went on to study at the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts where she received a diploma in acting. Moving forward Katherine is pursuing an MA in drama and wishes to continue working professionally within the drama industry. Her most recent work was in First Love is the Revolution where she explored the animalistic nature of humanity.
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Liverpool Hope Theatre Company
Contact us
If you would like to enquire about the work or book a workshop with Liverpool Hope Theatre Company please contact via email:
Martin Dimitrov (lead for this project) at:dimitrm@hope.ac.uk.
Katherine Myers at: myersk@hope.ac.uk
Cathryn Murray at: murrayc2@hope.ac.uk
Niamh Malone (founder of the company) at: malonn@hope.ac.uk
For more details on our previous work in prisons go visit our website at
https://liverpoolhopetheatrecompany.wordpress.com/
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