We have hit our target but are now stretching it to £3,000!
Please continue supporting The Andrea Project this week - the crowdfund isn't quite over yet and every penny counts. We want to be able to bring this project to Northampton in 2019, and that extra bit of money will help ensure that even more young people benefit from this worthy project.
Please keep supporting!
Thank you!
The OOJ team x
The Andrea Project: the pilot project and its success
The Andrea Project was originally conceived and delivered in 2017 as a collaboration with the Royal Court Theatre and the Octagon Theatre Bolton alongside our production of Rita, Sue and Bob Too. The Project was inspired by Andrea Dunbar, who lived her entire life in poverty and had her first play produced at the Royal Court while she was living at a women’s refuge in Keighley, West Yorkshire at the age of 18. She was a working-class writer with no further education and no background in the arts. The Project is a direct response to the concern: would we discover Andrea Dunbar today?
During the pilot, we worked with 8 young playwrights, 4 from London and 4 from Bolton. They took part in workshops with professional playwrights Rachel De Lahay and Laura Lomas, where they built on their writing skills, became confident in their own voices as writers, and discovered ways to tell the stories that meant most to them. They were tasked with writing a short play inspired by their own experiences as young women. The finished short plays were rehearsed and performed by a professional director and actors, and performed onstage at the Royal Court Theatre to a sold-out audience.
Please watch the following video for further insight into what the first Andrea Project entailed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jV_XnFHJ_H0
We want to run the Andrea Project alongside every Out of Joint show, beginning this year with Close Quarters, Kate Bowen's new play about women serving on the frontline in the British army. We need your help to get this project off the ground with a diverse group of local teenagers with a passion for writing.
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Who are we?
Out of Joint is a theatre company that makes and tours political, humane and socially engaged shows, bringing them to leading venues in productions of scale and outstanding quality. We have strong and long-established relationships with theatres all over the UK, which means we have the connections to be able to share The Andrea Project and its benefits with young people from across the country. We have a reputation for nurturing and championing new writers, and we want The Andrea Project to be one of the ways that we empower and inspire a new generation of artists to explore their world and reflect their experiences on stage. We want to help them consider a career in an industry which they may have otherwise thought was not for them.
Who will be involved in the project?
Stacey Sampson
An experienced, Sheffield-based Playwright, Actor and Educator; Stacey is going to run the workshops that will inspire our participants to write their own short plays.
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Kate Wasserberg
Kate is the Artistic Director of Out of Joint and she will direct the participants' work, which will have a one-off special performance at Sheffield Theatres alongside our co-production of Close Quarters in the Autumn.
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Gina Abolins
Gina is Out of Joint’s Education and Artist Development Officer and is responsible for the planning and administration of the project.
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The Participants
8 teenagers from in and around Sheffield who will be supported to explore their potential as playwrights, opening up space on our stages for their voices to be heard, clear and unfiltered, just like Andrea’s was.
The Impact
The Andrea Project aims to intervene at a critical stage in a young writer’s development, just when they are deciding their futures, and present their work on some of the UK’s most prestigious stages. The Project will give them the opportunity to recognise and celebrate themselves as playwrights. It also hopes to open the door to a career in the arts for young writers who may otherwise fall through the cracks.
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Risks & Challenges
Our key challenge with The Andrea Project is ensuring we are reaching out to a wide range of young people from different backgrounds. We want to include a diverse range of young writers, and are aiming to do so through considerable outreach in schools and local community initiatives which target disadvantaged groups. We will also provide travel expenses to participants so that they can attend workshops, and hope that by doing so we will ensure that nobody feels they cant take part because of financial reasons.
Why are we asking for help?
The Andrea Project means a lot to us, but it isn't part of our core work so we need to be creative about how we raise the money to do it. We feel it's crucial that no one misses out because they can't afford to take part, so we've devised a structure where participants won't need to pay a penny.
Last year's project made us passionate about The Andrea Project. All of the participants intend to write more plays, and there is an overwhelming sense of growth in confidence from all writers in the project:
"Taking part in this project is one of the best things I’ve ever done, the results were incredible. I’m so thankful for the opportunity and I hope it will lead to more writing opportunities in the future."
Katy, Participant
"If the stories that are relevant to me and people like Andrea aren’t being told, me and young women like me must write them."
Jasmine, Participant
We want to ensure that we give more young people this brilliant opportunity to share their stories onstage.
What We Need & What You Get
We’ve designed a set of rewards to thank you for your gift, and which will show you the impact your support has had.
Please help us to discover another generation of writers like Andrea; writers who don’t know how brilliant they are or how brilliant they could be.
Any amount you can give will help us provide this opportunity. Here are some of the things that your contribution could pay for:
● £5 will pay for the printing of the final scripts, so that the writers can see their words in the hands of a professional actor.
● £20 will pay for a participant to travel to a workshop.
● £50 will pay to hire space for a workshop for an hour.
● £100 will pay for the professional playwright to lead one workshop session to inspire our young minds.
● £200 will pay for the director for the big performance.
● £500 will pay for several brilliant professional actors to perform the plays our teenagers write.
● £1000 will pay for all the travel for everyone involved in this Andrea Project.
Other Ways You Can Help
We respect that as much as you may support the aim of this project, sometimes you just can't afford to spare any of that cold, hard cash. If this is you, don’t worry, that’s okay, we would love your support to spread the word about The Andrea Project far and wide. Tweet it, email your pals, send it to anyone you think might be able to help; the more we raise, the further into the future we can support running this initiative. Everything counts, we really appreciate anything you can offer.
The Andrea Project is generously supported by The JG Graves Charitable Trust.
