Cuckoo Fun-draiser

Cloud Cuckoo Land makes theatre for and with children growing up across Birmingham’s diverse communities. Our work has a dedicated focus towards young people in systemically marginalised communities: the stories we tell respond to their lives, celebrate their creativity, and explore some of the challenges they face. We'll hugely appreciate any donations you can give, big or small: even the price of a cup of coffee will make a real difference to what we can achieve over the next year.

Our shows are fun, welcoming and packed with music, sensory experiences and chances to play an active role in the story. They allow children the freedom to engage with them in their own individual way, and offer valuable space for reflection, discovery and transformation.  They're generally provided to children for free or on a Pay What You Feel basis in grassroots community, education or healthcare spaces near their homes (often in combination with other creative activities or food).


You can find out more about our work on our website 

Our vision is a world where every young person can access outstanding multi-artform theatrical encounters which celebrate their creativity, in the heart of their local community. In 2021 we want to offer more theatre to more children, with a wider range of artists/performers crafting and delivering new, socially distanced theatre pieces specifically for local communities. The pandemic has significantly reduced our income/activities in 2020, with 2 big projects cancelled (and Cloud Cuckoo Land wasn't able to access an Arts Council emergency grant).  So unfortunately we need to raise money now so the company can survive the year, cover its overheads and develop all the exciting new projects hope to make happen in 2021:

PLAYS + TRAINING

- Create an ensemble of local emerging artists/performers from groups which are currently underrepresented in children's theatre*, providing specialist, paid training and mentoring to open new doors for them in their careers and support them financially at this challenging time

- Provide a budget for the ensemble to create new theatre designed for children growing up in specific local communities**, which children can access safely, easily, and on a Pay What You Feel basis

- Ask the ensemble to decide the theatre they want to make, and create it through collaborative interdisciplinary devising processes which centre their voices

- Provide multiple new socially-distanced theatre pieces designed for children in local communities** (this might mean anything from a story trail in a park or street theatre performed outside children's houses, to 2-person shows performed outside classroom windows or puppet performances on carnival floats)

ADVOCATING FOR INCLUSION

Theatre for young audiences is an especially excluding area of the theatre industry: most artists and audiences represent relatively privileged groups, and it's getting harder and harder for everybody else to find ways in. We recognise that we can help change this. We aim to:

- Raise our voices for wider inclusion in theatre for young audiences, both in terms of the people creating and performing plays, and the children who get to experience them. We'll build new partnerships with bigger organisations to push for change. We believe that however many plays we make for local children and however good they are, pushing for change in the wider sector will help far more children access quality theatre than we can hope to support alone.

- Create spaces where a wider range of voices can be heard, through research about the barriers people face, facilitated open spaces for discussion and paid platforms for under-represented voices to be heard*

- Use our blog and social media to amplify the voices of more artists/performers from systemically marginalised groups

- Create a database of theatre artists/performers from groups which are currently underrepresented in children's theatre* who wish to work in theatre for young audiences, to raise their profile and make it easier for employers and collaborators to connect with them


* "Groups which are currently underrepresented in children's theatre" includes but isn't limited to working class artists, Black artists, Asian artists, artists from Roma or other traveller communities, artists from migrant communities, d/Deaf, diasbled and neurodivergent artists, LGBTQi artists.

** "specific local communities": in 2016-2020, our work's been provided mainly in our core communities of Sparkbrook, Balsall Heath, Northfield and Bordesley Green in South Birmingham, with some performances in Stechford and Highgate too. We've focussed on these areas because many children living there have less access to the arts due to systemic marginalisation. Now we want to widen our geographical focus to include more communities within Birmingham and the Black Country: but we'll maintain our determination to make theatre for and with children who are all too often excluded from it.


FIND US ON:

FACEBOOK 

TWITTER 

INSTAGRAM 

Or visit our website to find out more!