Babel

BABEL for which my role was writer and Community Director, was a WildWorks project in partnership with with Battersea Arts Centre (BAC), in partnership with Lyric Hammersmith, Theatre Royal Stratford East and Young Vic and performed in the run-up to the London Olympics 2010. It is part of my practice-led research into community-based, large scale locative theatre-making and its role in civic celebration and debate., A key project aim of BABEL was to bring together the community engagement teams from each of the organisations to work together to engage a large number of community participants living across London in the development of the show and the final performances. This was the first time the community engagement leads had taken part in a collaboration of this scale across 5 partner organisations., Beyond the overall aim to collaborate on an unprecedented scale in an innovative way, BABEL was created as “a cross-cultural pan-London celebration of the diversity of London in terms of language, culture, ethnicity, identity and the wider idea of communication beyond language.”, The result was a large scale theatre collaboration that culminated in 12 outdoor performances in Caledonian Park in London on 8-20th May 2012. BABEL was part of a theatre season called World Stages London (WSL); described as a “once in a lifetime celebration of London through theatre”. WSL was resourced by Arts Council England amongst other public and private funded bodies., I worked with the community leads of the 4 other partners to deliver a participation of 600+ from communities across 23 London Boroughs to audiences totalling 9000+. Participation was intergenerational drawing people from every age bracket in the census. 224 members of this London-wide took part in the final performance run.