Odd Arts deliver issue-based creative programmes with vulnerable and excluded groups.
We work within: Criminal Justice; Education; Community; Mental Health. Last year we worked with over 25,000 people.
Odd Arts Aims:
- Reduce-risk of (re) offending
- Build more cohesive and safer communities
- Improve mental well-being including increased confidence and self-worth
- Improve work-based skills through accreditation, communication-skills and therapeutic learning
- Increase access and engagement to arts and culture for disadvantaged groups
Values:
- Empowerment and enrichment for all
- Passion for arts and social justice
- Freedom to explore new ideas and create
- Equality of expression for all staff and stakeholders
- Learning from and within everything we do
- A restorative and strengths-based approach
Outputs:
- Issue-based drama and creative social-action projects (film, creative writing, theatre, visual arts) – responding to the needs of the people we are working with
- Therapeutic theatre programmes (usually in prisons and other secure institutions)
- Interactive, issue-based theatre performances (including radicalisation, exploitation, domestic abuse, self-harm, sexual assault)
All of our theatre programmes are underpinned by non-violent communication, restorative approaches and are trauma informed.
Key focus areas:
- Mental Health
- Violence Reduction
- Community Cohesion
Our programmes are delivered in schools, communities, hospitals and prisons, in the health, education and predominantly criminal justice sector.
Odd Arts first partnered the US Embassy and Home Office through our work in preventing violent extremism and radicalisation. Our interactive theatre workshops addressing these issues have been used as an example of best practice by EU Parliament (Helsinki 2019), and also commissioned by the Danish Radicalisation Prevention Centre (Copenhagen Autumn 2020) and the Portuguese Security Centre (Lisbon Autumn 2020). Huffington Post completed an article on this work which can be accessed here: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/the-workshop-teaching-children-about-radicalisation_uk_5cdeae65e4b09e0578024c88
Our programme ‘Blame and Belonging’ aimed at preventing radicalisation was shortlisted for the PSHE Award (Children and Young People Now Awards 2019) and also for the Equalities Award (Spirit of Manchester 2019).
