Past projects have taken the form of touring theatre productions, festivals, exhibitions, workshop programmes, digital media, street theatre, installations, carnival art, giant puppetry, murals, storytelling, outdoor site and specific performances, theatre in education, issue based theatre, lantern parades, shadow puppetry, mask making, comedia dell arte, circus skills...
A comprehensive list of projects can be found in our Annual Reports
If you are interested in booking any of these workshops (or even something similar), please get in touch.
A selection of projects:
- Lives Worth Living
Lives Worth Living has been adapted by Headway from an original script by Belgrade Theatre. This powerful drama looks at the relationship between two different people. Mark is 26 and is learning disabled. For the first time he faces life alone. Joe is slightly older, out of work and unhappy with taking on the role of full time carer.
The performance is approximately 30 minutes long and is accompanied by a 40 minute workshop where the pupils get to meet the actors in and out of character and begin to explore the issues raised within the piece.
A teacher's guide supports the performance and workshop and gives ideas for Key Stage 3 follow up work in National Curriculum areas such as Citizenship, PHSE, Drama and English.
Thanks to the kind support of The Community Foundation and The Sherburn House Charity we were able to offer Lives Worth Living free of charge to 20 Secondary and High Schools across the North East region.
Click to read the Lives Worth Living 2010 report.
- Boost Project
Creative training working in partnership with voluntary organisations in Nortumberland and funded by The Coalfields Regeneration Trust
- Hush Hush
Rosmary's Birthday is a film exploring the notion of secrets. Funded by the Northumberland Learning Disabilities Development Fund
- Opening Doors
- Out & About
Out and About (The Big Wide World) was a culmination of nine months of people with all abilities working creatively together and was a partnership with Headway Arts and Cramlington Ideal Centre to produce a vibrant and magical show which toured mainstream venues throughout the region.
- Parental Writes
- The Multicoloured Adventures of Giles Postbox
A play devised by Way Up North at Northstar Centre in Berwick, working with Headway Arts. The group drew from their own experiences as learning disabled people to create this entertaining yet informative piece looking at how society reacts to people they see as different. This was accompanied with “Speak Up, Speak Out”, an interactive workshop looking further into the issues relating to bullying.
This toured schools and mainstream venues in Northumberland.
- The Maritime Heritage Quilt
- Centre of Curiosity & Imagination
- Dreamboat - Headway Theatre and Sure Start Blyth
- The Releasing Potential Project
- C:Design
- Street Skool
- Omnibuzz
Headway Arts' innovative solution to lack of facilities in remote rural regions was to convert a single decker bus into a touring venue (with a spectacular paint job).
Later we designed our fabulous inflatable venue 'Headway's Arty Clarty Theatre Tent'
- The Diversity Project
Working in partnership with Age Concern Northumberland to bring together a range of groups to produce a CDRom. (2007)
- Blyth in a New Light
Lantern Parade as part of the 'Northumbrian Lights' festival, Blyth in a New Light. (A Winner of The Journal Culture Awards 2006). Working with families and children across the borough funded by Improving Croft & Cowpen Quay & Blyth Valley Borough Council & culture 10
- Urban = Rural 2005-2006
A collaboration with the Laing Art Gallery (Education & Learning) working with two very different communities - Cowgate in Newcastle and Westwoodburn in Northumberland - using mixed media & various creative techniques to compare and contrast life in these two very different areas & to build relationships to combat isolation and marginalisation.
- The V & A Objects Project
In partnership with the Laing Art Gallery, Tyne & Wear Museums and the V & A, Headway Arts worked with museum visitors & special school groups to create personal stories through interpretation of and in response to objects from the museum's collection. (2005)
WHAT TEACHERS SAID ABOUT OUR PROJECTS
- ‘If I could I would book this every year for my year 9 classes, I would’
- ‘Very powerful media covering relevant issues... an excellent platform for further study’
- ‘It was enjoyable, a very thought-provoking & challenging experience for both students & teachers’
- ‘Many of the children learned from doing and experiencing in this expressive way’
- ‘An excellent vehicle to inform and discuss issues’
- ‘An excellent way for children to learn, they are involved and not passive. As a school we feel this is one of the most important teaching and learning styles’
- ‘Students were enthralled by the performance which was perfectly pitched for their understanding’
