Mafwa Theatre CIC

For this year of activity Mafwa Theatre have focussed on 2 main strands of core delivery alongside Lincoln Greening; the redevelopment of Roxby Community Garden, a project to co-create a garden of sanctuary in the heart of Lincoln Green. This year saw the start of Mafwa Theatre’s second weekly group: Lincoln Greeners, a gardening group for all, as well as continuing support and engagement with Associate Artists. Kuluhenna Drama28 sessions (in person)278 attendances45 unique participants2 external tripsNumber of sessions and attendances are reduced compared to last year because it has been difficult to secure regular space at Patrick Studios every Friday. To counter this, we have worked with East Street Arts to change the time and day to Thursday mornings and are working with Bridge Community Church to find a regular space in the local area from January.Lincoln Greeners20 Sessions171 attendances37 unique participants2 external tripsLincoln Greeners began in April to use gardening as a way to bring people from different communities together, help the local community to learn new skills and support the redevelopment of Roxby Community Garden. Each session is led by Matilya Njau and supported by a volunteer. Sessions ran weekly over the growing season (April - September) and are running monthly over the winter. Lincoln Greeners are a registered It’s Your Neighbourhood group and received a Level 2 - Improving at this year’s In Bloom awards.Lincoln Greening3 Sow and Speaks3 Gala events300+ participants500+ local residents engaged in designs300 plants added to Roxby Community Garden1 mural created1 temporary photo exhibitionThe project has established a strong partnership with Leeds Conservatoire, Leeds College of Building and Leeds City College via a connection with Florence Clarke Drayson, Youth Social Action Apprentice. 39 students from Leeds College of Building, including plumbing and painting decorating students, attended 3 garden ‘Dig Days’ and helped with tasks like digging out old roots and plants, weeding areas, litter picking, clearing areas, cleaning graffiti, planting, and painting handrails. The work they did had a huge impact on the garden and it was evident that students were able to learn a lot about teamwork, working on a project, and more about the local community. One amazing outcome was that a sanctuary seeker of around the same age as the volunteers joined the group to plant and when the students went to lunch they actively welcomed him and asked him to go with them on their lunch break, which was a lovely example of strengthened community and social connection. He is now attending English classes at the college. Leeds City college contributed a total of 200 volunteer hours.We held 2 open-air community gala events at Roxby Close in April and in June. The event-days were made possible by the huge support and dedication of volunteers. Volunteers supported with event set-up and set-back, welcomed guests, collected feedback, hosted food, drink and and supported activity stalls. A total of 8 volunteers contributed a total of 10 hours across both events. A project steering group has been made up of local residents, Mafwa members and key stakeholders to provide advice and steer the direction of the project with bi-monthly meetings taking place since October 2021. Membership includes a diverse range of local stakeholders including councillors, residents and community organisations. Mafwa Theatre has developed a strong partnership with Leeds City Council over the last 18 months. The Council has been committed to working MT to identify and redevelop the Roxby Close site. The partnership intends to realise the transformation of this space as the Lincoln Greening “hub” at the heart of the housing estate for a wide range of art and gardening activities and has committed substantial match-investment to the redevelopment of the site and lead applicant in a joint capital grant application to fund the works. The Lincoln Greening project contributes to Leeds City Council's wider investment plan for Lincoln Green which will identify resources to make incremental improvements to the physical environment on the estate both in terms of Housing and the Public Realm. Both parties recognise the importance of community engagement if regeneration is going to be successful. LCC has been a key partner in co-facilitating and supporting MT to consult and engage with local residents and Council Members.MT has worked closely with Housing and Localities officers over the last 8 months to translate the design proposal into a clear work brief to employ the services of an external contractor to carry out the landscaping works. As of September 2022, LCC has launched a tender for the lead contractor for the redevelopment of the site and the outlined programme should see works completed by Spring 2023. We have built good relationships with Local Councillors who have attended a number of steering group meetings and events on site and showed support online by retweeting and liking our posts on social media.East Street Arts is a local arts charity leading on a neighbourhood plan for Mabgate and Lincoln Green. Throughout Summer 2022, ESA led a month-long creative summer school for local young people which included activities connected to the local neighbourhood including photography and zine-making. Engagement and Communities Lead Emma Bentley Fox attended 1 Lincoln Greening session and 4 summer school participants attended after meeting her there.Leeds 2023 provided match funding to support us to host our Spring 'Plant, Share, Create' community gala event in April 22. Plant, Share, Celebrate was a fun-filled afternoon for families in Lincoln Green to keep up to date with the project, contribute to a mural for the space and provide feedback on the current design plans. The activity gave local residents an opportunity to re-engage with a space that for so long has been left abandoned, and imagine a new space co-created by themselves and Mafwa. The public engagement demonstrated the strong community links that exist in Lincoln Green, the strong desire present for cultural and arts activities (particularly for children), and our ability to work with partner organisations effectively to deliver work.We have been closely working with local charity Touchstone as part of their Better Health programme, A Public Health England project to support physical and mental health outcomes for residents of East Leeds through creative workshops. Touchstone has provided a dedicated mental health support to attend our weekly drama workshops to assess impact on an individual level. Our relationship with Touchstone has continued to develop throughout the project, with a number of visits to observe sessional activities. We will continue to work with Mentally Healthy Leeds to ensure there is a mental health support worker present at all sessions as a point of contact and to enable effective signposting.We established a new distinctive brand identity for ‘Lincoln Greening’ to give the project an unique, exciting and fun spirit and to mark a clear differentiation from other core MT and community activities happening in the area. Our branding was created by The Archipelago, a Bradford-based design studio and features bright and minimal plant-inspired assets and a unique typeface. The fun and distinctive branding has been incorporated across all marketing and communications including social media, e-newsletter and hand-painted signage at the site by Leeds-based artist, designer and calligrapher Ellie Haywood. We've circulated around 1000 print flyers locally to promote the Lincoln Greeners gardening group and have worked with the Housing Team to make use of the community notice board to post update bulletins and posters to engage new participants. The project has gained good reach and engagement across our social media accounts. #LincolnGreeners has been used 25 times on Instagram posts with a reach of around 403 people per month and included on all tweets relating to the group. Our weekly Lincoln Greeners updates are often some of our top performing posts on Instagram each month, each reaching an average of 200 accounts are often amongst some of our top performing Tweets each month, often earning between 1000 - 2000 impressions.MT Twitter followers have increased around 10% from 883 in march to 971 as of september. MT were interviewed on BBC 5Live during our Plant, Share, Create event at the Roxby Close site back in April 22: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/QZ3qdfSZwl89y28FNdd4CD/how-one-community-is-greening-up-its-urban-spaces Lincoln Greening was featured in this article piece by The Yorkshire Evening Post: https://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/news/opinion/columnists/the-importance-of-being-green-in-lincoln-green-3585800Associate Artist ProgrammeThe Associate Artist Programme ended in January 2022, after spending 12 months supporting 6 emerging artists from migrant backgrounds. Mafwa Theatre have continued to support and work alongside all of the Associate Artists.Supported Associate Artist Mahshid Alavizadeh to secure a ‘Developing your Creative Practice’ grant from Arts Council EnglandDelivered a sold-out screening of Associate Artists’ short films, Flock to over 90 attendees at CLAYAs part of Leeds University’s Campus Live, Mafwa Theatre and Associate Artists created ‘Welcome’ an outdoor, pop-up performance, designed to engage passersby in a light-touch way. 1 or 2 performers, dressed in one bright, block colour, wearing a rucksack and pulling along a suitcase, attract the attention of passersby. The performance is accompanied by music and the performers do not speak. The majority of the performance could be described as ‘physical theatre’.We worked with Theatre Company Blah on two projects: Stirring up the Past audio walk and the Guerilla Gardening r&d with the support of associate artistCarried out a week-long r&d for an upcoming children’s theatre show titled Damya with Associate ArtistsEngaged Associate Artists Mahshid Alavizadeh and Eman Elsayed as support workers at Kuluhenna Drama sessionsDelivered Sit with Us at Migration Matters (Sheffield) and Yorkshire Integration Festival.Alongside this activity we:Continued organisational development activity with East Street Arts as members of the Guild Programme.Increased the company’s reach through increased social media activity and increasing the following, including over 1k followers on twitterWorked with Adrian Sinclair on a pre-feasibility study to secure secure project space and office space in the local areaStudents at Leeds Music Conservatoire held a fundraiser for Mafwa TheatreHeld a board away dayFormed ‘Friends of Mafwa’ an advisory board of trustees, community members and stakeholders who meet regularly to support with creative direction and organisational developmentUndertook strategy training from Colette KelleherExpanded volunteers and have 5 regular volunteers on session support and administrationCreated a podcast with support from Guild on the importance of Art in the refugee support sector (listen here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/s1-e1-guild-conversations-mafwa-theatre/id1644314626?i=1000579877251)Took part in a 5 day residency as part of Guild’s organsational developmentCompany away day to Newcastle to see Curious Monkey’s ‘here’ and an exhibition on radical play at the Baltic