Creative Communities

NWT recognises that culture plays a significant role in building and sustaining communities. We believe in the power of the creative potential in each of us, and strive to provide communities from every part of Ipswich with opportunities to participate in, make and enjoy culture.

Creative Communities is our programme of productions, projects, activities and opportunities for young people, local communities, and the education sector.

Some of our recent work includes:

• A social prescribing project Tell Your Story delivered in collaboration with the NHS
• A Warm Space offer in our Front of House that supported the most vulnerable members of our local community during the cost of living crisis
• Let’s Play an early years project created in partnership with a local primary school
• Get up and Go free summer activity for children in receipt of free school meals
• The Big Afternoon a free, outdoor community festival
• Metamorphoses a mainstage production of a new adaptation of Ovid’s epic poem by our Senior Youth Theatre
• Hare & Tortoise a Primary schools production touring to 24 schools across Suffolk

Our Creative Communities work also includes supporting the education sector to engage with our produced work; offering creative careers focused opportunities to young people and community hires in our main auditorium.

We run seven term time Youth Theatre groups, including our new Young Company offer for 16-21 year olds who are emerging theatre makers. There are 150 spaces for young people to take part across the year which includes our Youth Theatre Plus and Squared offer for disabled and neurodivergent young people.

Alongside our own projects we regularly collaborate with other organisations and support the work of a wide range of local groups including Aspire Black Suffolk (advocacy), Volunteering Matters (social action), UnScene Suffolk (a community arts organisation for visually impaired adults), Ipswich Youth Steel Band and Suffolk Refugee Support, by hosting them in NW2. Having communities, staff, practitioners, and artists in the same space provides fertile ground for future creative collaborations ensuring NWT is truly representative of Ipswich.