Conversations, dispatches and ideas from the Bush Theatre.
Our community team have the brilliant Kwame Owusu on board as an intern. He first wrote about his experiences at the Bush in October, when he was working on a community photography project. You can read that here.
Here’s his next update:
I am now reaching the end of my time with the Bush Theatre in my role as the Community Intern and can honestly say it’s been such an excellent experience, one in which I’ve met a wide range of fascinating people on a wide range of exciting projects. In my time so far I have been part of the preparation and execution of projects, workshops and future collaborations with primary schools, elderly homes, individual artists, and everyone in between!
Almost straight after I wrote my last blog post I assisted at a storytelling workshop with Year 6 students at St Stephen’s Primary School (location of our This Place We Know production, Battleface), led by facilitator Bronya Deustch. The project took inspiration from our This Place We Know season and sought to explore how the students saw their neighbourhood (which of course, is the same neighbourhood as the Bush). They were then assisted with producing pieces of writing based on this, which gradually developed into mini-plays. These plays are going to be collated, printed and bound into a special book for the school and I’m so glad that I was involved in this project.
I’ve also had the opportunity to experience the inner workings of the Bush Theatre from beyond the Community department, spending time with both the Admin and Development teams. I was really looking forward to my time with the latter since I’d never previously known anything about the vital world of fundraising (development). I learnt a lot about the different methods that the Bush uses to ensure that it can continue to put on its world-class programming and its support of emerging artists. Equally, I knew little to nothing about what goes into the day to day running of a busy London theatre and so my time with the Admin department was very insightful, particularly my conversations with Cat, the Bush’s General Manager.
My time here at the Bush has also included the opportunity to plan my own ideas for projects that the Community department can carry out in tandem with the Bush’s season of plays and I am currently in the throes of planning a project for the Bush’s first play of its new season in the refurbished building in 2017 which is very exciting!
I’m 100% certain that I’ll never forget my time at the Bush Theatre and while I could obviously thank every single member of the amazing Bush Team, I definitely need to thank my desk neighbours, the lovely Literary Projects Manager, Amy, the wonderful Assistant Producer, Lise, and of course, my fantastic boss, Community Producer, Amanda, all of whom made me feel at home from day one.
