#SRtRCSpotlight: North West SRtRC and Odd Arts in Tameside
Our North West team are launching their latest collaboration with Odd Arts theatre company this week, as part of an ongoing partnership with Tameside Council. For the last 3 years, SRtRC has been delivering workshops in Tameside schools, alongside Odd Arts performances of issue-based plays that address racism and discrimination in a challenging and thought-provoking way. By combining techniques such as forum theatre and hot-seating characters, the Odd team gives students insights into real-life stories and events, which then enable them to participate in SRtRC workshops with increased empathy and understanding.
Tameside Council has commissioned the jointly-delivered project on an annual basis with support from their Community Safety team. This year, a new theatre piece has been created by Odd Arts and a workshop devised in conjunction with SRtRC staff. The play is called Coming Home, and is based on a true story about a man called Winston who was a victim of the Wind-rush scandal. It tells the story of Winston being sent “back” to Jamaica and living homeless for 10 years while trying to get back to England where his family still lived. The play explores racism and looks at themes around identity and ‘home’.
Coming Home is being premiered at Micklehurst Primary School next week, and as well as guests from Tameside Council, Winston himself will be in attendance.
In addition to the primary schools programme, which will reach 600 young people across 10 schools, the Tameside project across 2025/26 will:
- deliver to 5 secondary schools reaching 750 young people
- deliver a pilot project to 1 16-18 setting reaching c.100 young people
- run 2 adult training events: One will be primarily focused on teachers in the area, the other event will be open to all professionals, including police, community safety teams, school staff, youth workers etc.
The secondary schools and post-16 settings this year will receive performances of Odd Arts’ The Great British Lie and facilitation around the play, followed by a SRtRC workshop which will explore issues of stereotyping, what racism is, critical thinking skills and processing disinformation and how we respond to racism.
Our adult training, meanwhile, will explore:
Unconscious bias; What does racism look like for our young people?; What does racism look like online?; What does inter-culturalism mean?; Embedding anti-racism into our schools and workplaces; Exploring anti-racist policies and practices
Following the completion of the workshops, an event will be hosted at the end of the project. 5-10 pupils will be invited from each setting to continue their anti-racism learning. The final plenary of the event will be a Tameside pledge for young people to summarise how they will ‘Show Racism the Red Card.’
TikTok: @odd.arts.uk Instagram: @oddartsuk
X: @TamesideCouncil Instagram: @tamesidecouncil