Grassroots Arts UK2000 - 2017
For nearly twenty years, I worked in the voluntary sector supporting international arts-in-education programmes and eventually set up a charity called Grassroots Arts UK. I was appointed Chair of Trustees and also took on the role of coordinating the volunteer network for an annual international touring programme involving Grassroots Theatre Company (GTC) from Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. The tour involved GTC working in schools, churches and community centres organised by local community groups throughout the UK including London, Newport, Hemel Hempstead, South Shields, Norwich and Edinburgh. GTC specialised in theatre-for-development and ran programmes in their home city of Bulawayo and the more rural province of Masvingo, where they hosted a large performing arts festival called 'Sanganisai Children's Festival (SCF)' involving over 3000 pupils from local schools and invited artists. Part of the aim of the UK touring programme was to fund raise towards SCF. My original involvement with GTC was when I was working as a volunteer for The Daneford Trust, an East End international volunteering charity run by the highly committed, ex-teacher and local activist Tony Stevens. My placement was as an Assistant Teacher at the Youth Contact Centre (YCC) in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. It was here that I had my first taste of teaching, albeit as a naive young 19 year old with little pedagogical background. My time at YCC led to making friends with Ephson Ngadya, who founded GTC and the long and short of this relationship was a long term partnership between his company and various voluntary groups around the UK that I helped to nurture. This eventually led to an annual touring programme that took place for around 15 years and provided a much-needed income for GTC members and to support its work back in Zimbabwe. I reflect on it as an early form of social enterprise with a fair amount of support-in-kind through subsidised accommodation and board through our UK volunteer network. Reflection On a practical level, I developed great organisational, financial and people management skills running the network and tours. However, on a personal level, it gave me a much stronger sense of my values around community, humanity, friendship and, perhaps unsurprisingly, the importance of the arts and creativity in bringing people closer together and feeling more connected. Volunteering is a great pathway towards recognising your personal passions, values and interests, and is something I often recommend to young people as a way of identifying motivations and potential pathways. |
Ephson RIP
My work with GTC and Grassroots Arts UK would not have been possible without my friendship with Ephson Ngadya, who sadly passed away from cancer in 2016. He was a highly committed activist in the Bulawayo community, who used the performing arts as a way of preserving Zimbabwean heritage and raising issues of concern to the local community through his theatre-for-development (TfD) work. Without Ephson, there would have been no annual touring programme in the UK or SCF and his constant optimism and commitment to ensuring GTC grew over time, particularly through a very challenging period in Zimbabwean history, was testament to his incredible energy and loyalty to those around him. |