Hartfield Community Play nominated for Local Award

Turn to page 44 in this week's Courier newspaper and you’ll find the Hartfield Community Play vying for your attention.

The project has been shortlisted for a Heart of the Community Award. The award, sponsored by the newspaper and AXA PPP, highlights local causes, celebrates community action and offers projects some financial support in the form of prize money.

Hartfield Community Play is competing for your vote in the Community category with 24 other organisations many well-known of all of them good causes.

Out of the shortlisted projects in this category half of them involve theatre, cultural or heritage activities for different age groups and 2 are offering skills training to adults.

Community Play Board Game“The Hartfield Community Play project is about bringing different groups in Hartfield to work together and consolidating community action into one project”, notes Liz Carter from Claque Theatre. “We are aiming to attract 300 community volunteers of all age groups and backgrounds who will help run many aspects of the play alongside our professionals. We hope the experience and skills they learn will help sustain existing and future initiatives long after the play is over”

The play will be the company’s 33rd production. Previous plays have inspired and equipped people to set-up arts centres, start festivals, build up community choirs, rescue declining areas and even organise themselves to stop unwanted housing developments.

Regular audience member Dawn Waldron comments, “The first time I saw a community play I was completely mesmerised. It’s not like going to the theatre, it’s an adventure. There is a larger than life quality which brings stories vividly alive and pulls you in to the experience. I love the way whole communities are brought together, bonded by their shared experience and sent back out into the world happier and more connected. This is important theatre“

To vote, pick up a copy of the Courier in Tunbridge Wells or East Grinstead between now and 24th November. Fill out the voting slip on page 52 and please send in your vote for us: project number 004.

You can follow our progress on Twitter @communityplays #heartofthecommunity and on Facebook www.facebook.com/claquetheatre

Thank you.

Photograph of community play training game courtesy of Linda Medhurst.

For more information visit http://www.claquetheatre.com/blog