Red Rose Chain, dynamic and award winning theatre company

Entirely self-sustaining, Red Rose Chain is an independent theatre company that produces original material working with hard-to-reach groups and disadvantaged people in the Ipswich area. The aim is to make powerful stories that confront social concerns and it also has to be said that they are also good at putting on a brilliant show. We recently caught up with Joanna Carrick, Artistic Director and Founder of Red Rose chain, to find out what working with the community means to her and how it plays such a big part in the work of the theatre company.

Here’s what Joanna Carrick had to say:

What makes Red Rose Chain unique is that we are a professional theatre company but our community programme is central to what we do. We have a very diverse youth theatre that meets on a Wednesday evening and around half of our members have got either additional learning needs or a mental health issue, and all the group integrate together and get on brilliantly.

On Thursdays we have a youth theatre that is specifically for young people with more profound disabilities. We also have a community theatre company here on a Tuesday afternoon for adults with mental health challenges and they also volunteer here, so when we do a professional production they’ll be part of that. They might volunteer back stage or front of house. In this way they all feel like they really belong here. We sit down and have lunch together, and everyone feels like it is their company. Since we’ve had this theatre built they feel like it is theirs, that they are part of it.

We don’t have a hierarchy here which means we do not separate our community work from our productions. It’s all just as important as each other. When we look to employ professional actors or technicians, a really important part of our interview process is talking to them about our community work and making sure those people have a good attitude towards this and that they’re going to relate really well to our participants. In a way that’s more important to me than them being a brilliant actor. They’ve got to have the full package really.

Can you tell us a little more about how you got started as a a theatre company?

In the early years I had the privilege of working with an amazing group of young people. I think it was about the fact that we were all working together with a parity and a common vision for the theatre company which ended up with something magical happening that was incredibly exciting. Soon after we were approached by the local authority to do a project around young people in care. One of the young people who I was working with at the time had grown up in care in a children’s home, then in foster care until he was 12, after which he was fostered out of London into the local area. I was a bit wary of taking on this piece of work as I thought being part of the theatre was an escape for this young person from all that. But he wanted to do it, so from there we started to work around the issue of being in care and we created a live piece and a film. It won national awards and we went to America to go to film festivals, From there it set us off on using art to kind of heal people and to discuss really difficult issues.

People find out about our community work through friends and word of mouth. With shows, we’ll put pieces in our programs and displays about what we do so people are aware of it. By coming to the theatre they think, ‘I didn’t know you had this other side’ and they will get involved that way. We also have partnerships, such as the mental health charity, Inside-Out. We will do a workshop for them and we will meet participants and then they come here. We have partnerships with the local special schools so that their students find out about us in that way.

What are the biggest challenges for the team at the Red Rose Chain?

One of the biggest challenges we have when working with the community is finding enough time. There is always something to do, so it is about making sure we can deliver as much as possible. Because we have to apply for funding and we have to run the company and we have to produce the plays, it means we have to make sure we’ve still got enough time to get out to the community centres and chat to people and deliver the workshops. It’s making sure that our tiny team can have enough of their time free to make those contacts with people and talk to people. That’s important to all of us.

So what does the future hold for the Red Rose Chain?

We’ve got some big applications in right now, including the Big Lottery Fund to enable us to expand the work we’re doing, particularly with young people who come from economically deprived backgrounds and who have various different challenges in mental health and disabilities. We are finding that for so many people, coming here and belonging to this can make a difference to their lives. It might be that they might not get on too well at school or they might have things going on at home, but they can feel special here and we see that with our participants.

Something I say a lot to young people is that being part of the youth theatre means that they are doing their own projects, it’s their thing. I also tell them that if there’s a day when they’re feeling really down about things they can come in here whenever they want. The door is always open. My phrase is, ‘you can always come and do the washing up.’ They like that phrase, and I hear them say, ‘we’ll be in to do the washing up!’

I believe that Red Rose Chain and The Avenue Theatre is a safe place where young people can do more than just come in. They can come in and feel needed. It’s important because I think we all need that, don’t we? We need to feel like we’ve got a purpose.

So there you have it. As you can gather from Joanna’s answers community work really is a main component in Red Rose Chain’s continued success. If you would like to donate towards Red Rose Chain’s work, including their current seating campaign, please contact Sarah at [email protected] or call their Box office on 01473 603388.