Barbican Theatre Box 2019

What is Barbican Box? 

Barbican Box supports the arts in schools through creating and presenting artistic work which can support the drama and dance curriculum. The programme was developed in response to teachers’ requests for a more creative, expressive form of arts education. The aim of the programme is to enable young participants to develop a range of creative and transferable skills whilst accessing the Barbican’s world-class arts programme. 

The impact of Barbican Box is three-fold: empowering students to create original work, giving teachers the skills to lead this creative process during Barbican Box and beyond, and presenting theatre which audiences can enjoy as an end in itself. 

How does Barbican Box happen? 

Each year, the Barbican commissions a world class theatre company artist to design and curate a Box, providing an artistic starting point from which teachers and students can devise their own piece of theatre. Barbican Box 2019 is designed in partnership with Slung Low, an award-winning theatre company based in Leeds. 

The project kicks off for teachers with a two-day Professional Development workshop led by Slung Low artists, which explores different artistic approaches to the Box. Teachers are then matched with an Artist Mentor, from whom they and their students receive ongoing mentoring. 
In schools, teachers use the Box and its learning resources with their group to create new work.  The process of creation and collaboration evolves over months of making theatre, and through this, students develop a wider knowledge of the arts, creative skills and other transferable qualities such as teamwork, communication, decision making and leadership. 

Schools are offered tickets to see a main house production at the Barbican, to introduce them to new work and the devising process. The project culminates with an inspirational performance showcase, at which students share the results of their hard work with other schools and an invited audience of family, friends and guests.
 

Barbican Box and Slung Low

Slung Low’s way of making theatre is profoundly practical. Risk-taking but not dangerous. Robust but kind. 

We make theatre adventures in unlikely spaces. We rehearse in these public spaces as well as performing there. This helps us join a community where we make and talk to passersby who never fail to ask us who we are and what we do. We invite these people to come and see our work, offering free tickets so that we can help grow an audience that we might not get to meet in a traditional theatre space. We also find the outdoors exciting, you can do anything there and anything can happen when you’re outside. Every show is different and often the show drenched by torrential rain brings gifts you could never imagine.

The Box hopes to share how we make with you. It concentrates a lot, like we do, on creating the right space and time to create a theatre making community- that works as a company or as a class.

It also tries to simplify the world a little bit, takes us back to basics so we can see the wood for the trees.

So we invite you to build a shelter, make a fire, feed each other, play outside, dance, tell stories and dream of a new (and better) world.
 

The Barbican 

A world-class arts and learning organisation, the Barbican pushes the boundaries of all major art forms including dance, film, music, theatre and visual arts. The Barbican exists to serve its wide and diverse audiences – engaging with arts lovers through our unique and inspiring artistic events at the Centre and using our Creative Learning programme and free events to introduce new audiences to great arts experiences. Over 1.77 million people pass through our doors every year, plus a further 300,000 at offsite events across London, alongside hundreds of artists and performers from across the globe featuring in our artistic programme. 

Barbican Guildhall Creative Learning 

We believe the arts have the power to transform lives, that people of all ages and backgrounds should have access to world-class music, theatre, dance, visual art, film and spoken word.

Since the Barbican Centre and Guildhall School launched a creative learning partnership in 2009, more than 42,000 people, including children, young people, teachers, families, artists and communities, have participated in the hundreds of free events and activities we programme each year designed to give people the opportunity to engage with the arts, access some of the world’s most in demand artists and discover their creative voice. Our cutting edge projects take place in the Barbican’s iconic building, the Guildhall School’s state-of-the-art facilities and in community centres, parks, hospitals, schools and colleges across the City and East London. 

Barbican Theatre Box 2019 is generously supported by:

City Bridge Trust
The Haberdashers' Company
The John S Cohen Foundation
The Miss Joan Sinclair Charitable Trust
The Sackler Trust
Tower Hill Trust
The Worshipful Company of Barbers
The Worshipful Company of Gold and Silver Wyre Drawers
Charles S. French Charitable Trust

We would like to extend a warm thank you to our artistic partner for 2019, Slung Low, and to the schools and colleges whose participation made the project possible this year. 
 

Slung Low:
The Barbican Box 2019 was made by Matt Angove, James Blakey, Brett Chapman, Lucy Hind, Alan Lane, Sally Proctor & Joanna Resnick.

With additional material by
Helen Goalen, Abbi Greenland and Becky Wilkie of RashDash
Heather Fenoughty
James Phillips

Special thanks to
Alex Garth and Sarah-Jane Wingrove of Handheld Arts
Matthew David Scott

Barbican Guildhall Creative Learning:
Creative Learning Producer (Theatre, Dance, and Poetry) - Kirsten Adam
Creative Learning Assistant Producer - Lauren Brown
Creative Learning Apprentice - Kaya Birch-Skerritt

Film:
Whalebone Films

Photographer:
Camilla Greenwell and Matthew Kaltenborn

This is a Barbican Guildhall Creative Learning programme.