Homeless Action Theatre Group

So maybe you’re wondering where exactly are money raised will be going to! For the last 7 weeks, I (Emily) Have been working with Lancaster and District Homeless Action in partnership with The Dukes Theatre, to deliver theatre sessions to a growing number of the homeless clients. The first thing I have to say is; this group is life-changing. The developments, improvements and all round creativity I have witnessed during these sessions is beyond belief and is not only changing the lives of those involved, it’s changing mine to! 

Basically, we started out with the hope that we could chat with and explore games with the clients. Within the first 3 sessions all expectations were raised and the group have now re-written and started to perform A Christmas Carol. Through re-writing it, the members of the group have been enabled to not only modernise but, more importantly, create a story that resonates with and reflects their own, often difficult, lives. To put things into perspective, there has recently been talk of developing the play over the next year in order to eventually tour the piece around prisons across the country. I believe that this group has the complete ability, passion and creativity to do this if given the chance. But this is where the problem lies. Funding is low at the homeless shelter. By raising money through our event, we will be able to contribute to the continuation of this amazing theatre project. 

Whilst we have been re-writing the script, in such a short space of time I have had the absolute honour to witness the personal and emotional development of the clients, as they delve into their past lives, current lives and how things may be in the future. Learning of the complications they deal with on a day to day basis has been unbelievably touching.

Lets hope that in the future, we are able to visit the group as a professional touring company, creating inspiring theatre! 

The group will be performing a rehearsed read-through of A Christmas Carol on 10th December, I’ll be back to tell you how it goes!

Emily 🙂 

Our Initial Project Outline

To keep you all updated we thought we’d post our initial project outline for all you tie-dye sock enthusiasts. Enjoy!

 

Project Outline

Our aim is to teach the clients of Homeless Action during their weekly activities session a creative skill that will result in the creation of a product to be sold in a pop up shop in Lancaster City Centre. All proceeds will be donated to the Homeless Action centre’s Theatre Group held in DT3. We are currently in contact with a number of potential companies to fund the project including Wilkinsons and LUSU.

 

Homeless Action

We will hold six 90-minute sessions over the period of six weeks in which the clients of Homeless Action will be introduced to the process of tie-dying as well being taught basic business skills that come with selling a product. Below are the 6 session outlines and their provisional dates.

 

WEEK ONE	Friday 17th January	– Introduction to the project – Each client creating a tie-dyed square in order to teach them the process (these will be made into a decorative patchwork for the action centre)
WEEK TWO	Friday 24th January	– Showing them the patchwork – Introducing the product and the initial stages of the process (begin creating)
WEEK THREE	Friday 31st January	– Tie-dye session – getting their creative input and help with the production
WEEK FOUR	Friday 7th February	– Tie-dye session – getting their creative input and help with the production
WEEK FIVE	Friday 14th February	– Basic business discussion of costing and packaging – Photographing the products
WEEK SIX	Friday 21st February	– Plenary and Feedback

 

Product

The product we will be creating is tie-dye socks. We’ve chosen this product due to them being low cost, its simplicity in creation and the appeal to customers. Our aim to have the cost of the socks and dyes to be funded by outside partners so all money made goes to the charity. Another reason why we’ve chosen this product is that if we have left over stock after the pop-up store they can be donated to Homeless Action. We wanted our chosen product to raise money but also benefit the clients. After feedback from the centre we came to the conclusion socks would be useful to them.

 

Pop-Up Shop

For this project we have the opportunity to open a pop-up shop on Wednesday 19^th February to Friday 21^st February in St Nicholas Arcade on Lancaster’s high street. This will be where we sell the product to raise money for Homeless Action. As well as selling the product we would also hope to have boards that explain what we are setting out to do and more about the charity. By doing this we aim to open a discussion with the community about the work Homeless Action are doing in the hope we raise more awareness.

 

In order to create a professional, yet creative look for the store, we are considering hanging the socks around the shop from string via pegs. This will not only create a decoration for the shop, but also an interaction for customers to decide on which product they wish to buy.

 

Press

We are aware that this project, especially in collaboration with the store in Lancaster, will have local and potentially national press interest. This is an exciting prospect to raise awareness of Homeless Action not only in Lancaster but also across the country. In addition to this we are also in contact with the University’s media outlets and local radio stations.

 

 

The beginning of our journey …

So here we go! The first official blog post our journey!! This officially solidifies our group & our upcoming entrepreneurial project in 2014. The blog is basically going to a constant update on what we’ve been up to each week, the progress of the project itself & the general experiences of the group members. Let me tell you, we are so excited to get this up & on its feet!

Our idea? Well in a nutshell its a creative project that is aiming to reach out & teach the homeless individuals of Lancaster simple creative skills. We are hoping to go into the local homeless shelter in the city centre & over a period of around 6 weeks teach them the art of tie-dying. Hopefully this will lead to us producing tie-dyed items with the shelter users that we can then sell & raise money to give back to the homeless in Lancaster, as well as raising awareness to the local community of homelessness as an issues in the area – fingers crossed!! 

Up to now we have been storming ahead with ideas & putting a crazy amount of feelers out there. We’ve had incredible support & interest from the activities co-ordinator at the shelter, so its looks like its all go 🙂 Also two days ago we had our networking session with companies/funding teams from Lancaster – this was a huge success! The group got incredible feedback from everyone we spoke to, lots of compliments on our idea & some super advice on how to strengthen it further. We are currently one of these companies who showed great interest & enthusiasm in our idea, so everything is coming up roses. 

What’s coming up … in the next couple of weeks the group is going to begin to finalise roles & create a name for ourselves. We are also going to begin practising our tie-dying skills, so here come the endless late nights of tie-dying everything in site – I’m expecting to spend the next however many weeks with rainbow coloured hands?! Also we’ve got some feelers out there in terms of funding, which will allow us to start purcashing items & equipment. 

I’M. SO. EXCITED. 

Katie 🙂