Space To Create
Dr Hannah Phillips
Worcester Arts Workshop’s building closed in 2020 due to COVID. The arts venue had a 40-year history of community arts, its strap line ‘space to create’ had just been integrated into the new logo and signage. Worcester Arts Workshop’s Director, Dr Hannah Phillips along with the trustees who included co-founder, Richard Hayhow (Open Theatre) decided in response to the global crisis that we needed to ask ourselves not only how we overcome the immediate threat but to look to the future. How could we create space to think, plan, strategize and be responsive to need? The old business plan was redundant, a new model of business and practice needed to be created and tested.
Worcester Arts Workshop was an old building that was not fit for purpose, although an important and safe cultural space in Worcester, without a lift it was not accessible for the people who used it, it was not energy efficient or environmentally sustainable. The building shifted focus from the work and drained resources. In response to the global emergency, it was essential to prioritise our marginalised artists, vulnerable participants and our socially engaged work. We invested the money from the lease of the building and reserves to embed Worcester Arts Workshop's work around diversity and inclusion in the arts and making new socially engaged work into Worcester's cultural sector.
Match funding from ACE’s project grants and further investment from Severn Arts, Worcestershire County Council and a partnership with Worcester Theatres enabled our first project ‘Mobilise’. The project aimed to offer agency to female identifying artists, participants and audiences in a climate where gender-based violence and inequality is endemic in our culture. A visual arts outreach project led by artists Yasmin Agillah-Hood and Kay Mullett worked with women with learning disabilities and / or autism and girls who attend a school which provides specialist education for students who have been Permanently Excluded from mainstream settings many of which have Special Educational Needs (SEN), specifically Social, Emotional and Mental Health Needs (SEMH). The project included the development of a new piece of work, Badass Medusa #MeToo, a bold and brave retelling of Medusa’s story through collective rage, agency and a feminist queer gaze for International Women’s Day 2022. This new work written and directed by Hannah Phillips has been co-created with composer Nik Haley and film maker Nicola Prestage. Blurring the lines between live and virtual performance using spoken word, new composition, song, film, and interactive technology. The diverse fierce female identifying collective challenge a misogynistic myth which has silenced and sexualised Medusa whilst intersecting current gender issues and questioning gender injustice women and girls face globally.
An aspect of this project was to integrate and pilot self- care support into our work with artists. The company has been working with Worcestershire based counsellor, Isabel dos Santos. Workshops offered self-care strategies for artists when working with vulnerable participants and high levels of emotional distress and the application of psychoeducation and creative strategies for artists within the rehearsal space to avoid retraumatization. This work has transformed our thinking, shifted our approach and has become an integral part of our work.
Mobilise is now emerging as a socially engaged arts company. The space we now occupy is a fusion of the creative and therapeutic. We embed care and self-care in the foundations of our work. We believe access and inclusion is about supporting artist’s self-care and well-being as well as their practical needs. Artists need to feel energised, understand their own self-care needs and be resilient to effectively work with vulnerable participants, work with challenging or sensitive content or to make change in their community.