Tricycle Theatre Celebrates Ten Years of Work with Refugees

The Tricycle Theatre is preparing to celebrate its tenth anniversary year of Minding the Gap, a creative learning project that provides young refugees, asylum seekers and migrants who have recently arrived in London the opportunity to use drama and theatre to express themselves, develop their voices and help prepare them for life in the capital.

The Tricycle Theatre currently delivers over ten workshops every week at its home in Kilburn, engaging more than two-hundred students and a team of fifteen international practitioners from Greece, Italy, Poland and America. Working collaboratively, they use a range of theatre techniques and activities to boost confidence and self-esteem, culminating in a performance of theatre and short films written and performed by the students themselves.

In the London Borough of Brent, where the Tricycle Theatre is based, over one hundred and thirty languages are spoken in the surrounding secondary schools. It is the only borough in London to place young asylum seekers, refugees and recently arrived migrants in reception classes before they move into mainstream schooling. The supportive environment of the rehearsal studio provides students with the perfect opportunity to develop confidence and the skills required to work together as a team. In addition to developing their spoken and written English, students come away with a sense of pride that they have been a part of the Tricycle.

Fay Byron, a teacher from the Greenway Project at Claremont School in Brent said: "We always expect that the Minding the Gap project will boost our children's confidence, as they are usually rather shy and reluctant to talk when they first join us. The project has definitely achieved that this year and thanks to the excellent facilitators, we have seen some remarkable changes in the children's levels of confidence and spoken ability. It is a joy to see how much they have changed, and we are not sure whether this change could have been achieved without the aid of the Project."

Nadia Papachronopoulou, a Drama Facilitator for Minding the Gap said: 'Over the course of a year we create a show for the main stage at the Tricycle and made short films. The young people work with a professional playwright and professional film crew to help tell their stories and realise their ideas. I have never seen a performance where the actors are so happy to be part of a production, it has been incredible. I have watch participants turn from shy and self-conscious to be able to confidently speaking in English and always volunteering to do more acting! This program has been very empowering and allowing young people who have not been to a theatre before to be part of a company where they are the actors and I look forward to continuing this in the coming years.'