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Annual Report: Oct 2018 – Sept 2019

Another exciting year for Odd Arts, with continued commitment to creating theatre that enables people to see the world differently. We have focussed our efforts on greater reach and specialisms in theatre work, tacking mental health and violence reduction, including: Domestic abuse, radicalisation, sexual violence and aggression. We proudly grew to a core staff team of 12 (very talented, committed and creative) people, and were successful in converting to a Charity Incorporated Organisation. Odd Arts Vision and Values: Odd Arts uses specialist high quality arts to challenge, inspire and transform the lives of vulnerable and excluded people. Odd Arts works within the criminal justice, community and education sector. Key outcomes include: ● ● ● ● ●

Increased engagement in arts and culture by disadvantaged groups Improved work based skills through accredited artistic opportunities Improved mental wellbeing including increased confidence and self-worth. More cohesive and safer communities Reduced risk of (re-) offending

Awards shortlists 2018/19: - Children and Young People Now PSHE Award - Spirit of Manchester’s Equalities Award

Flagship programmes

Blame and Belonging is an interactive forum theatre performance delivered to enable people to build

empathy; and communication, conflict resolution and critical thinking skills needed to help people gain a greater sense of belonging and identity within society. It hopes to reduce-risk of radicalisation and specifically looks at hard to address subjects such as hate crime, Islamophobia, Immigration, community tensions, Far Right extremism and DAESH inspired extremism. Our radicalisation work was delivered to over 4000 people across the year on behalf of Manchester and Leeds City Council and the Home Office, as well as a number of other Universities, community groups and colleges. We have been proud to include it as part of Manchester’s Radequal delivery, where we go on to work with community groups to deliver arts projects and exhibitions in response to some of the themes of piece that may have moved or affected them. We were invited to EU Parliament in Helsinki to deliver Blame and Belonging at a convention exploring best practice in Countering Violent Extremism. We also took part in a consultation on the Prevent agenda at St George’s House, Windsor Castle. Blame and Belonging was the project which found us shortlisted for both our awards this year.

We truly believe this project helps to create a safer and less divisive society, in a time where tensions across the country feel very high.

BROAD Building Resilience and Overcoming Adversity through Dance and Drama. B ROAD is an

innovative,evidence based theatre programme that increases resilience & well-being in young adults in custody and secure settings. It is a ground-breaking programme culminating physical theatre, drama, dance & psychology.

BROAD has been co-designed by Company Chameleon (www.companychameleon.com) and Odd Arts (www.oddarts.co.uk), and is being evaluated by UCLAN Psychosocial Research Unit adding to the National evidence base of the impact of arts in criminal justice or secure settings. The project was funded by Arts Council England. The pilots this year have taken place in Forest Bank prison, Lancaster Farms prison, Care4Children (secure care homes), Lincolnshire Secure Unit and Bolton Hospital (in patient unit for mental health). Each project has been hugely different, but incredibly rewarding. Seeing dance and theatre coming to life in some of the darkest and restricted places, has felt quite magic at points! We have had a blast working with Company Chameleon and are really excited for delivering this type of therapeutic dance theatre programme in the future. The research report will be published early 2020.

Grey Area is a new ground-breaking programme that has worked in partnership with Greater Manchester

Police and the University of Manchester to create an interactive theatre workshop aimed at increasing knowledge in consent, and reducing the risk of sexual assault and rape (specifically amongst students). The pilot showed a change in attitude and increased knowledge from 100% of people participating. We look forward to delivering this workshop further in 2020. We passionately believe this project will reduce sexual violence and increase safety and healthy relaitonships.

Resilience and Relationships is designed to r educe violence, increase resilience a nd i mprove

non-violent communication a nd relationships. This 3 week programme has been designed and delivered 6 times, in 3 UK prisons. The project is all consuming for both staff and participants, making huge impacts. Examples for some prisoner participants includes: Positive re-engagement with family members; reduction in wing violence; and increased support ability to speak about mental health, including suicidal thoughts and learning how to ask for help.

Wigan Restorative Justice was a f ilm project in partnership with Wigan Council, funded by The Deal. It was a 6 week project with young people that explored the impact and consequences of anti-social behaviour on both perpetrators and victims; whilst also educating and encouraging both young people and victims to get involved in the process of restorative justice. The film premiered at an event in Wigan attended by the families of the young participant actors, council members, and community workers, and of course the actors themselves. It was an emotional celebratory event where everyone remarked on the powerful story told by the young people.

Forum Theatre has continued to be an important part of our delivery.

We delivered our first Forum Theatre

training course for Headspace Bolton and have used the technique to engage people in some of the most complex issues faced in society today; and allow them to come up with realistic solutions and ideas to take forward. We are excited to begin a brand new tour of ‘Just One Favour’ w hich was developed this year. A new forum theatre play focussed on child criminal exploitation across schools in Tameside. We are also looking forward to welcoming Geo Britto, one of the worlds longest standing forum theatre facilitators, who trained and worked alongside Augusto Boal at CTO Rio, to deliver in Manchester.

We have had a fantastic ongoing relationship with Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS, delivering a variety of different projects focussing on wellbeing and healthy relationships.

ONGOING PROGRAMMES OF WORK: We are extremely proud of the ongoing partnerships we have with many colleges, secure units, councils, Police forces, prisons and community organisations. We work twice weekly in children’s secure units developing confidence, communication skills and teamwork through drama. We have delivered our Award Winning theatre programme ‘Spiralling Mind’ to our largest audience to date, of nearly 3000 young people in Salford aimed at prevention and reducing risk of self-harm, anxiety and mental health issues. This project gives people the confidence and skills to ask for support, and support others, and prevent mental ill health becoming something unmanageable and devastating for young people across Salford. We have continued to deliver our ‘cyber-bullying’ prevention and ‘healthy relationships’ performances and workshops to 1000s of young people across the Northwest.

We have continued to partner with Manchester Young Lives to deliver regular weekly sessions at Moss Side Millennium Powerhouse, and beyond, in Manchester communities (funded by Young Manchester). Specialist projects include youth lead work around Child Criminal Exploitation and County Lines; LGBTQ+ positive relationships; domestic abuse; and climate change, using drama and film. Weekly sessions include: Monday Drama Club; Wednesday Social Action Sessions; Thursday Creative Leadership Training (accredited)

Meet the Team...

The Future… It’s really important to Odd Arts that we build on the success and specialisms of our existing work. Many of the projects described above are designed to have greater reach across the UK and especially the criminal justice sector. We have a number of International Training trips planned for staff at all levels, as well as the start of discussions about further work across the EU. Our 2019-2022 Business Plan has a particular focus on: - Diversity: Innovative developments to ensure a truly diverse workforce, culture and reach in order to increase equality and achieve the best outcomes a nd programmes. Diversity to Odd Arts means diversity of: Experience / background; ethnicity / race; faith; sexuality; gender; ability; asylum seekers/refugees. We believe that greater diversity within our workforce is critical. We anticipate increased diversity to improve all the following areas of our work: Development of new work; partnerships; projects; representation; staff and engagement - Violence reduction: Impacting locally, nationally and internationally by using and sharing effective practice and approaches that are shown to work. Creating innovative and evidenced based partnerships to reduce violence. We believe that Manchester and other UK cities are facing a crisis in youth crisis and wider community cohesion conflict as well as community violence. We are also committed to addressing the extremely high levels of rape committed by and to University students. - Mental health: Offering skills, support and experiences to improve well-being and reduce-risk of mental ill health. Working in partnership with CCGs and secure hospitals to deliver programmes that enhance recovery for people experiencing mental ill health. Working with subject specialists to do so. - Increase theatre in CJS: Enabling our best-practice theatre programmes to reach greater numbers of people in prison in order to have a positive impact on their lives and reduce re-offending. We are specifically hoping to work with the most vulnerable prisoners who are currently in majority cell lock-up and not accessing prison education or employment. Use our CJS theatre programme to impact the national evidence base on arts in criminal justice. We are also planning a Sweet 16th Birthday Bash for Odd Art’s 16th year! We look forward to inviting friends and supporters of the charity and celebrating our successes and impact. Odd Arts

@oddartsuk