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Making a World of Difference: When Arla met Mind the Gap
Friday 27th January 2012
Blog Category: Acting Company Blog
For the past two days, Mind the Gap has been working with a group of eight people from Arla Foods on a High Potential Leadership Programme. Arla make dairy products like Cravendale milk and Lurpak butter. It’s very different from making theatre!
Over this year the group is working with Mark Wright from People Create to look at leadership. Mind the Gap was asked to provide one module of the course focused on Leadership, Diversity and Inclusion. The Arla eight worked together with the Acting Company to try out the different theatre techniques that Mind the Gap use for making theatre. Members of the Acting Company and Arla delegates were split into two groups, and each was tasked with devising a short ‘scratch’ performance to address the question; 'How do you make a world of difference?'
One group created a performance centred on London 2012 and imagined what the world would be like in 2020 if the Olympics and Paralympics merged into one event. The other group's performance looked at the escalation of events that lead to rioting and civil unrest.
Both groups worked brilliantly to make a piece of theatre in such a short amount of time. Tim said, "Thanks to everyone from Arla and the Acting Company, the whole group committed to the process and I think they really turned a corner. It is unusual to have two shows rehearsing in the same room at the same time, it had a competition effect and there was a big element of sharing, learning and pushing each other on."
Big thanks to Jo Smedley and everyone from Arla for spending time with us and trusting that we could deliver. We really hope you found it useful and would love to know your thoughts and reflections on the experience - please leave your comments below.
Comments
I loved working with the Arla group. It was awesome to meet the people and have some fun with them. we played games and we did a little show with the Arla group. I hope they will come back to see us again From Chris
I enjoyed the people, we did some workshop games, I did a show with the group. It was good to have some fun with them. Thank you for coming to see us, From Susan
and we did a show about riots in our group
Arla Foods people were very profesional. They were like us, they understand the way we work and they had some experience in acting. They took to it like ducks to water. Thank you for coming, you were fantastic .
It was great today working with a new group of people from different companies, I thought they did rather well, working in different ways working with us. They didn't know we had learning disabilities. They treated us like were normal people. Thank you for your input on the 2 days. You were great, please come back again.
Love Anna Marie Heslop and Zara Mallinson.
It was good to work with the people from Arla, they worked with the actors as a team and delievered a short, strong performance at the end of their time with Mind the Gap.
It was a nice change to work with people who, although they were new to theatre, knew what they wanted to do, and used the most direct way to go about achieving it. They were very decisive and active, taking charge when needed, and letting others lead when necessary.
Great to spend time in a really creative environment and see two companies work together to achieve really great work. Thanks to everyone for the brilliant participation and a special thanks to Tim and the actors for making this a memorable part of our development programme. Jo Smedley
Thanks To Tim and the great team at Mind the Gap. It was a brilliant experience working with the actors, which I very much enjoyed and learnt from. Watch out in the future - you might see me propping up the bar in the Rovers Return ! Best Regards Steve M
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