Project Wolf

Project Wolf involves young people with special needs in creating and performing their own theatre. The young people may have learning disabilities, social difficulties or they may be excluded from education or the community.

There are also groups of young people who have special needs because of organisational or management decisions that have created the need for addressing themes of collaboration and co-operation. Project Wolf is Social Theatre where theatre is a performance art form addressing the needs of community groups.

Recent Project Wolf Events:

2000 Young Peoples programme at Theatre Royal Bath with masks and drumming on 'The Labours of Hercules'. Ancient stories were improvised and performed in movement and rhythm with chants and chorus.

2001 Programme for a Devon Primary School for all pupil, staff and parents who collaborated for a full time week on 'Noah's Ark'. Although this programme was essentially to address recent changes in the management of the school, it also provided in-service training for staff on theatre-in-education methods.

2002 Young adults with learning disabilities developed and performed their own interpretation of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' in a Day Centre in Worcestershire. This later developed into a primary schools initiative where the group both performed and led workshops.

2003 Community theatre programme in a Roma-Gypsy village in Romania. Young teenagers and children created and developed their own wolf stories with masks and movement.

2004 A partnership between Glastonbury in Somerset and Zarnesti in Transylvania for young people to write and make their own theatre and perform it for the local community.

2004 A peer-led collaboration between a Somerset secondary and primary school, addressing issues of social exclusion and motivation.

Project Wolf believes that theatre is a participatory, community event through which children and young people are able to:

• discover a voice for their concerns and articulate them through theatre
• discover new roles and take responsibilities
• discover and develop skills of theatre and creativity

Project Wolf works in collaboration with other theatre groups including Imule Theatre Group, Actionwork TIE, I Power I and Moving Ground Projects

Project Wolf is funded by individual schools and communiuty theatres and attracts funding from the Daisy Fund, Clarks Foundation and Bath's theatre-in-education programme.

Project Wolf can create a new initiative for YOUR young people and make a difference! Contact Sue Jennings for more details.