Theatre leads to tangible change - and we can PROVE it!
Updated: Mar 16
With just over 24 hours left in which to stream I, Lord from our performance at the Space last month, let's have a look at what our audiences there have been saying:
"I was surprised by the honesty and how emotionally connected I felt to the subject."
"It highlighted some really key issues that are allowing prosecutors to escape justice."
"It touched me how when you have mental health problems, people undermine your experience - not understanding that your mental health problems may primarily be because
of what happened to you."
"It was more fabulous than I could imagine."
"Very surprised, extremely thought-provoking."
"I feel more equipped but still that I have more to learn."
"Surprised by the genuine gentleness toward the subject matter."
"I don’t feel so alone anymore."
"It was richly layered without being too complex to
follow. Beautiful."
"This should be on a church tour!"
We'll take that!
So if you want to see it now, book through the links at the top of this post - or, if you miss it this time, we'd better just make sure we can get it on tour!
'I, Lord' at General Synod
We couldn't possibly talk about the feedback we've had without bringing up an extraordinary achievement: the Lead Bishop for Safeguarding and the Bishop of London both referenced the show and the work we have been doing around it at General Synod (kind of like Church of England Parliament), when calling for improvements to safeguarding and mandatory trauma-consciousness training. You can watch them here:
We have also since the show, delivered our Duty of Hope workshop in trauma-conscious communication for people in positions of care for trauma survivors, to members of CofE safeguarding staff and others working with spiritual abuse survivors. This has been the first time any part of the CofE has agreed to take on survivor-led training.
Another win: petition inspired by 'Milestones' successful
And if that isn't enough to convince your most cynical friends that theatre can be a gamechanger for real-world action - we also got the amazing news this week that a petition that originated from the post-show discussion after our showing of our play Milestones in September has been successful and led to policy change. The play is a semi-verbatim piece exploring true experiences of temporary accommodation for families with children under the age of 5 years old, and the discussion was spearheaded by CHAMPIONS, the national research project from which the information was gathered, and Shared Health Foundation, which went on to lead the petition. It asked that families with children under 2 should be entitled to temporary accommodation large enough to contain a cot, and that any properties that needed a cot should be entitled to one. This will save lives, and we are so humbled to have been a part of its coming together.
From the individual to the large-scale, we are seeing things happen. We are spurred on by this to keep pushing for connection, for communication and for change - all from a place of bold trauma-consciousness.