On our Street – Producing
In 2024, I was excited to work alongside an incredible creative team commissioned by the Care Training & Consultancy CIC to share the power of lived experience and platform the stories of unpaid carers.
For over a year, I worked alongside UP YER AIRTS as co-producer to develop the theatre performance ‘On our Street’ which was commissioned by CTC to portray the lived experience of unpaid carers in Dumfries & Galloway.
We brought Emma Forsyth on board who is a young theatre maker from Dalbeattie. Emma is known for creating new work around the untold or forgotten stories centring around educating and entertaining audiences. Emma did an incredible job of writing and developing the script, inspired and informed by unpaid carers themselves through the CTC’s Carers Voices podcast project which encouraged unpaid carers to talk about their personal experiences and she directly met with unpaid carers and worked closely with the team at CTC to ensure the play accurately and sensitively reflected the experience of a diverse group of unpaid carers in the region.
We worked with Emma to engage 5 local actors to take on the roles within the play and organised rehearsal dates as well as building the incredible creative team that included Dale Muir as Lighting Designer, Juno Glover as Set Designer and Liam Russell as Sound Designer.
The play was filmed during the rehearsals by Ruari Barber-Fleming and is hoped to go on to be used as an educational tool going forward.
All the teams hard work culminated in a performance at Easterbrook Hall, Dumfries on Thursday 10th October for Dumfries & Galloway’s second unpaid carers conference. The event put the lived experience of unpaid carers centre stage as part of their endeavours to listen, understand and champion the needs of the carers. Guests on the day included unpaid carers, health and social care professionals and other support organisations as well as members of the public who were keen to learn more.
We replaced the keynote speaker session that would normally kick off a conference with the first live performance of the play and the performance truly put the lived experience of unpaid carers centre stage.
It was an incredibly moving project to be involved in, to see it develop and from the first reading of Emma’s script to seeing the actors bring the stories to life, it was heartwarming to hear the reactions to the performance and I am very proud to have played a small part in the development of the work as one of the producers.
Check out the work of the Care Training and Consultancy CIC (CTC) as they undertake their projects across our region.
Care Training and Consultancy CIC are committed to delivering people-focused training on first-class care practices. This is what sets them apart as lead training and education providers in Dumfries and Galloway and beyond.
They believe everyone deserves the best care possible care. Their mission is to improve the quality of care within our community through high quality education and training.
Photos courtesy of the fantastic Mike Bolam Photography.
