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We are organising a community to community exchange utilising community performance and the 'Imagine' process to kick off an Imagine Southwark project including community theatre. 
The SHOW: ‘The Whole World Gets Well’  REVIEW

Follow-up    Funders    Principals Actors

Scrap Mettle SOUL (stories of Urban Life) is a community of volunteer performers ages 5-95 and residents of Uptown Chicago. 
 
Participants: from Chicago: Dr. Richard Geer, Artistic Director and Founder and about 25 people from Scrap Mettle SOUL, as well as Bliss Browne, founder and President of Imagine Chicago. From Southwark: all those living and working in the area who would like to be involved in moving towards health and also those who would like to be involved in the future plans.

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Follow-Up
Following Scrap Mettle's visit: our community performance will be developed, based on stories of community health gathered in Southwark by us and written (with much input by us) by SMS's playwright Jules Corriere and directed by Richard Geer. The plan is to train people in England to do our own writing and directing as quickly as possible. Imagine Southwark will as part of its community change work include ongoing community performances. The first of these would be on the theme of community health and would be based on the stories of the neighbourhood. This production would support larger project goals of effecting community change in the area of community health with an initial emphasis on food. 
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Funders and Partners 

Committed funders  included Minister for Public Health (NHS), Director of Public Health for London, and the Strategic Health Authority for SE London. Other venues and partners are being sought for whom this exchange can build local capacity.
Budget: Total budget is £60,000. 

Sponsors

Grateful Thanks to all of the many people who helped to make this tour possible.

Special Thanks to:  

Partners include

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Principals:
Dr. Richard Geer, Artistic Director and Founder, Scrap Mettle SOUL, is a pioneer and leader in community performance as community development and theatre in the service of social justice. He has created over thirty original community based works in the past decade and moved audiences at the Olympics, the Kennedy Center and in neighbourhoods around the US. Geer received the Dorothy Norton Humanitarian Award for his work in Uptown and holds a PhD in performance studies from Northwestern. back to the top

Bliss Browne, Founder and President, Imagine Chicago has engaged many communities in Chicago and across six continents over the past ten years in understanding, imagining and creating the future they value. Arts are regularly incorporated into intergenerational civic projects that harness hope and imagination as resources for civic engagement. Bliss is internationally known for her uncommon ability to bring widely separated groups into productive and creative joint dialogue and action. Imagine Chicago partnered with SMS in 2002 to create the community performance project Moving to Health which was brought to London and Scotland in January 2003.

Kate Start, the London organizer of this project, is a health and management consultant with over 30 years experience in the NHS. She is setting up Imagine Health, and chairs the East Dulwich Community Center. Kate met SMS at the 10th Anniversary conference of Imagine Chicago in Chicago September 2002 where they ran a workshop on storytelling which produced performances by conference participants of all ages from 18 countries. For more information, see www.startconsulting.com 
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Copyright  Imagine Southwark/ Imagine Peckham 2002

updated 9 April 2003