Reach Inclusive Arts, Wyvern Theatre, Theatre Square, Swindon SN1 1QN: end of project report.

Street Arts, held at, The Shop, Cavendish Square, Park South, Swindon:

Reach Inclusive Arts, an arts and disability organisation based at the Wyvern Theatre Swindon, provides arts activities for people living in the local area who are disabled and/or  have mental health issues.  Reach design projects that offer opportunities to engage in the arts and promote inclusion in the community by showing work produced by our project groups.

During the week beginning Monday 2^nd August and every day following up until Saturday 7^th August, Reach moved away from their familiar arts venues to work in ‘The Shop’, a resource centre based in Cavendish Square, Park South, Swindon.  Reach chose three art forms for this project, drama, music and visual art, and worked with local people, most of them young and many with mental health problems or learning difficulties.  A group of ten, with three professional arts workers, devised a show, planned the art work and composed music that was shown to members of the public who were going about their normal Saturday morning shopping.

Reach have a long and successful history of producing projects of high quality that entertain large numbers of people.  In the past this work has taken place in arts venues, schools or inside community buildings.  We have known who our audience is likely to be and what we could expect from the groups with whom we engage.  Street Arts pushed our boundaries, brought us outside, quite literally and moved us forward into new territory.  Reach wanted to extend our presence and introduce ourselves, and our work, to new audiences, especially to people who do not routinely engage in the arts.

Street Arts not only met this challenge but exceeded expectations.   The group chose to base their work on the TV hit series ‘Dr Who’, and use this as a fun way to dramatise significant events from Swindon’s past.  They started of with the original pig markets that gave the town its name, derived from ‘Swine Town’ and included the arrival of the trains, the outbreaks of Tuberculosis from the unsanitary living conditions and, of course, included Dr Who visiting the magic roundabout.  The performance was really well received by a good sized local crowd of people who followed the show as it moved around the square from scene to scene.  The stage was set by a magnificent bright blue Tardis, made entirely from cardboard boxes supplied by the local Cooperative store and then painted by the group working with our visual artist, Sheen Dean, who also helped them construct a Dalek, pig’s faces and other props.  Isabel Evans pulled all their ideas together and wrote and directed the play and Katherine Lucas composed some original music that really brought the show to life.

One of the group participants said of his week with Reach, ‘I’ve loved it – trying to put it all together and making the Tardis’. One of the group member’s mother said ‘I’m very proud, they have done extremely well.’