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Curious Monkey was a community theatre company based in the North East of England. The company worked with care-experienced young people to produce a set of films exploring family contact within the care system.
Blue Cabin is helping to preserve the legacy of theatre company Curious Monkey – including a set of films exploring different perspectives on family contact within the care system. Funding support from Esmee Fairbairn Funding Plus supported this process.
Curious Monkey was renowned for its work with marginalised communities like refugees and care-experienced young people.
Curious Monkey worked with these communities in partnership, and in depth, to create compelling stories that challenged prejudice and stigma, educated audiences and empowered the individuals from those communities who were involved.
Like Blue Cabin, Curious Monkey received funding from the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation.
One of Curious Monkey’s long-running programmes of work was Troupe. Troupe brought together a group of care experienced young people, over the course of a year, to develop their theatre skills, explore themes, and educate audiences about the care system in England. You can find out more about Troupe from the Troupe handbook.
Members of Troupe worked with writer Paddy Campbell to produce three short Virtual Reality (VR) films, to be viewed through VR headsets, that explored the theme of family contact within the care system.
The three films provide three different perspectives on the events surrounding a ‘contact visit’ between Serena and her brother Riley (both living in the care system) and their mum Grace.
They were designed to create empathy, challenge prejudices, raise awareness and improve the care system for everyone.
Currently these films are not being used, but it is our hope they could offer inspiration to organisations working in children’s social care.
You can find out more about the films, and how they’ve been used so far, in the following slide deck, which includes:
If you’d like to make use of the films, the pack includes guidance to help you, plus contact details (algolding777@gmail.com) for you to request more information.
