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An Introduction to Imagine if Applied Theatre Company
Imagine if theatre company gives opportunities and a voice to disadvantaged members of society. This company thrives in its ability to give advantages to prisoners and people who have previous convictions and struggle with mental health issues, homelessness, are victims of abuse, have low-literacy levels, struggle with unemployment and low socio-economic backgrounds. (Imagine if website, 2015)
“We have demonstrated that theatre is a powerful tool that can be used to reach out and connect with people from all areas of society” (Imagine if website, 2015)
“The theatre we create is based on the world around us comprising real stories from real people.” (Imagine if website, 2015)
The company’s work is extremely successful according to their website. They have toured to over 20 theatres across the UK, and have worked in 26 prisons across the UK and the USA. If this wasn’t impressive enough, imagine if had a month long run at The Pleasance at Edinburgh Fringe Festival and the company was only founded in 2015. Imagine if have accomplished some very real, honest, exciting and even possibly life-changing work in the span of only 6 years and it does not stop there. They have a range of programmes that help people develop very important life skills whilst in prison and even after release, if they need the support.
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Phoenix Workshops
The Phoenix programme is funded by Leeds Community Foundation, The Goldsmiths Company and Community Fund, and is a post-release programme for prison leavers which uses the creative arts to develop the relevant skills to be valued members of society. The programme works with people with convictions and gives them arts-based opportunities to help prevent offenders from offending again. This programme offers a wide range of support including phone calls or in person meetings to discuss problem solving around mental health issues, accessing benefits, and housing. The support also includes free arts-based workshops leading to public performances and arts-based social events that are funded by Imagine If and paid work opportunities including peer mentoring and paid theatre and film work.
In order to moderate the programme and see how affective it is with the people who are enrolled with the programme, Imagine If uses the Intermediate Outcomes Measurement Instrument (IOMI) toolkit (Ministry of Justice Analytical Series, 2019). This toolkit includes the IOMI questionnaire, a data entry tool, a costing tool, and guidance notes. They use this toolkit to be able to correctly collect data including cost effective solutions and feedback from participants.
As previously mentioned, Imagine If produce truthful and honest theatre, which they plan on expanding in 2021 as part of the Phoenix programme. The company will be producing a short film involving participants of the programme, assisting the artistic director of the theatre company (Francesca Joy, professional writer) to shape all aspects of the project. From what the website tells me, these are mostly paid roles. Additionally, there is opportunity to gain some paid work experience with the opportunity of working behind the scenes as opposed to acting, directing, and writing. This film will be made available to prisoners who are still serving time, to educate them on life upon release.
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Bird on the Wing Workshop
The Bird on the Wing programme works specifically with people of all genders in prison who are close to release. This programme uses drama and the arts to create a positive mindset whilst still in prison, and to get prisoners thinking positively and productively about life upon release. These prisoners get support in prison and can continue to receive support even when they have been released back into society. This support includes employability skills and opportunities in the form of workshops, giving both Imagine If staff and prisoners the chance to work face to face. These workshops will also give prisoners the skills to devise a short performance that will showcased to recruitment agencies, giving the prisoners a starting chance of getting out into society.
“Imagine if’s practitioners are trained theatre professionals with extensive experience in delivering theatre-based provision in community settings, specialising in work with hard-to-reach communities.” (Imagine If Website, 2015) With knowledge of the criminal justice system and links to services with housing and Jobcentre plus.
Imagine If aims to give prisoners social skills to use upon release in order to give them employment opportunities. They have achieved this as on their website under “workshops” and “Bird on the Wing” there are graduate stories that evidently showcase that their work is truly successful. In David’s Journey it is said that this person has successfully secured a full-time job just after four weeks of being released from prison, and this is because of the work that he did with Imagine If. Furthermore, it is also said that he is working with Imagine If in prisons as a motivational speaker and presents poetry with encouraging messages. Carl’s journey is just as enthusiastic if not more so, it is said that Carl has worked on his “artistic journey” upon release, developing “creative skills for self-expression.” It goes on to say that he is developing stand-up comedy and skills towards applying for jobs.
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#MakeThatChange Workshop
Imagine If’s programme #MakeThatChange has a lot more arts involvement than the other programmes that I have presented. It was based in Leeds and ran from December 2017- April 2018 and specialises in theatre, spoken word, photography, physical theatre, film making and rap music. Using all of these artistic methods has concluded in the making of a documentary. This documentary resulted in fundraising for a charity called Behind Closed Doors which is a domestic abuse charity. 63 unexperienced young people participated in this documentary and spent 5 months working on the project. Funding for this project included Leeds Inspired, the #iwill Fund and the High Sheriff of West Yorkshire Fund. Below I have linked a video from the Imagine If website that has many accounts from many young people that worked on the project. There are also accounts from industry professionals who came in and worked with the young people, explaining what they do and how they contributed to the creation of the documentary.
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The Whiz Head Workshops
The Whiz Head programme specialises in working with people who have a history with addiction and/or mental health issues. This project included a series of workshops over a 12-week time period, resulting in performances held in the Phoenix theatre. The participants did some extremely interesting work, adapting The Wizard of Oz and focusing on Dorothy’s character with the theme of addiction- exploring the characters chosen path to recovery. This project allowed participants to develop self-esteem and confidence. This has also given participants the advantage to talk about their struggles and to overcome in artistic and expressive ways. Not only did the participants gain knowledge in performance styles, but also in stage-craft and the producing side of staging a play. This particular programme is quite exciting for both the participants and their theatre audience because they performed to years 9 and 10 students, and to a public audience in the evenings. This is an extremely inspiring and informative experience for participants and audience members as the audience get a first hand feel into what it is like to struggle with addiction. In my experience of seeing performances about addiction and crime, the actors were always playing a part and had never struggled with it personally, so to see a theatre company enforce first hand experiences is truly liberating. Not only did they perform these experiences but they then offered a Q&A after each performance for all audiences, which is even more informative, which is especially crucial to young people, in my opinion. It was truly moving to see that a lot of participants (according to the website) had felt a huge sense of pride because of their involvement in the project, especially because they got to showcase this in front of friends and family. They were proud to project something positive to their family and friends, giving them a huge sense of achievement. Funding from this project came from The Community Foundation and Comic Relief.
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Freedom Workshops
Freedom workshops are designed for people who are still in police custody. The workshops are designed with the specific needs of the participants in mind. They are designed to give prisoners a sense of freedom in their lives. These workshops have also been delivered to ex-offenders and have achieved outstanding results with both existing prisoners and ex-offenders. The workshops are directed to people in prison and upon release to give them all of the relevant skills to better themselves for release.
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Imagine If Productions
Free as a Bird
“Free as a bird is a documentary which shows the value the arts has in helping people change their lives” (Imagine If website, Accessed on March 11th 2021)
The documentary that I have attached above has many accounts from people who have been in prison and they are explaining how they have changed their lives and how they have sued the arts to do so.
Jadek
A new play exploring culture and identity that was toured in theatres and prisons in 2019. Above is a link to the trailer.
You Forgot the Mince
This performance is set in Leeds and is centred around the topic of abusive relationships. This performance has been written to inspire people to bring change into their lives. Attached above is a link to the trailer.
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The Criminal Justice System
According to the National Criminal Justice Arts Alliance (Published 2019) on page 3, there is profound evidence that shows that the arts in the criminal justice system is a positive outlet for prisoners. The first paragraph of page 3 starts with “Evidence demonstrates that having a creative outlet is not just good in itself, but actually improves the safety and wellbeing of those in prison.” This first paragraph is an extremely positive start in explaining how the arts is helping prisoners to have a positive outlet on life upon release, making it highly unlikely for offenders to reoffend. This is all spoken in the words of the Secretary of State in the Ministry of Justice.
On page 29 of the National Criminal Justice Arts Alliance (Published 2019) they talk about Imagine If with accounts from Francesca Joy (artistic director) and from a participant. Imagine If used this document as a guide in order to form the company. From this document I have learnt that Francesca has had “first-hand experience” of how the criminal justice system affects people and communities (Page 29). It is clear that this “is key to Imagine If’s success” (Page 29.)
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Workshop Exercises
Through my research I have learnt that many of these programmes can be converted into inspiring workshops for young people. As I understand it, myself and my group are planning to work with young people from the age of 11 to possibly 20. The groups that we are planning on working with are young people with challenging and/or disadvantaged backgrounds. My range of exercises aim to give these young people new found motivation, self-confidence and the freedom to express themselves, which Imagine If have continuously done throughout their work. I always believe that a good facilitator works alongside the group, learning with them, and for someone such as myself to have first-hand experience in a disadvantaged upbringing. I think that this will be a reflection of myself as a facilitator as I still have so much to learn, and I also feel like I can still work on my confidence. Doing this workshop will not only benefit the chosen group, but I think it will benefit myself also. I plan to learn a wide amount during this experience, and to develop it later on in the future.
Warm up
I think it would be extremely beneficial for both the participants and the facilitators to start off by going one by one in the group and asking how everyone is feeling on a scale from 1-10. This will give us as facilitators a chance to read the room to understand the mood and to work with it. It will also give the participants the chance to think about how they are really feeling, why they are feeling it, and it could give them the time to open their minds to feeling better by the time the workshop is over.
What I would do next is put in an ice-breaker in order for the whole group to get to know each other, as well as the facilitators to get to know the participants. An enjoyable ice-breaker would also be really valuable here as the participants may suffer with confidence issues, so this will be a great opportunity to push the group out of their comfort zone in preparation for the main task. The ice-breaker will include a simple passing the ball around the room followed by saying their name and where they are from, us as facilitators and the group will do this until we have heard from everyone, and then we will add in an additional task. The additional task will be trying to remember what other people have said. This task not only gets everyone to know a little bit about each other, but it also gets people testing their memory, and team work skills. The team work element comes into this exercise as you have to concentrate on the other participants and what they are saying. The point of this ice-breaker is to get everyone somewhat comfortable with each other and as said previously, to get people out of their comfort zone for the main task.
Main Task
This main task aims to hopefully get people to open up to the group, in great detail or not much at all. For this main task we will use an empty book as our stimulus and build a story with it. The empty book is to enable participants to create a story that is directly linked to things that they have experienced in a safe environment. The task will start with some words written on paper scattered around the floor. For example, words such as poverty, addiction, struggle, family, money etc. From these words, the participants will have a think to themselves to what these words mean to them. From that, the empty story book will be introduced. Once it is introduced, the group will have their own story that they can supposedly see the writing. The writing that they can make up in their mind will be their own story, that they will have the opportunity to share if they would like. This task gives the participants the opportunity to open up to the group and to share things that may be out of their comfort zones, in a completely safe space. However, if some participants don’t want to share their stories/experiences then that is fine too, because it may inspire people who do not wish to speak out at that time, to perhaps speak out at a later date.
Cool Down
The cool down will be asking the group how they are feeling from 1-10 again, to see if there has been a change. This is useful to both participants and facilitators to see if anything that we have done, has perhaps left them feeling better than they did at the start, or maybe worse. This shows us that what we have done has either worked or hasn’t worked, which is useful for the future.
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