STUCK | A Theatrical Interactive Audio Workshop
Last month, we had two great opportunities to pilot our new workshop, STUCK, commissioned by the team behind the Live Well Movement in Greater Manchester.
The creation of STUCK
The idea for STUCK came from discussions with hundreds of local people, including Primary Care Clinicians, Social Prescribers, and community groups across Tameside. Through these conversations, we discovered a common feeling of being “stuck” among people and services alike. A feeling exacerbated by a widespread sense of loneliness that puts Tameside first for loneliness in Greater Manchester and second in the Northwest. But, alongside these findings, we also uncovered a wealth of people and community groups who are doing great work to support and inspire, as well as hearing about a holistic and person-centred approach to helping those who are feeling stuck from Dr Mark Spurrell on the Greater Manchester podcast Primary Care Knowledge Boost. So, we thought, what if we could offer a workshop that could help connect all these people, highlight the brilliant work that was being done, and inspire participants to think in a community-led way about the problems individuals face…
After several months of discussion and co-production, we have designed STUCK to be an engaging theatrical audio workshop. Using thoughtful prompts from the voices of our community group, we invite participants to create and really imagine a character who is feeling “stuck”. We invite them to think about all their strengths as well as the problems they face. Then, with the help of the voices of many of the community groups we met in Tameside, participants are asked to imagine how a community-led solution, tailored to their character’s unique situation, might help them become unstuck. Like all Made By Mortals work, the workshop is designed to deepen participants’ connection and understanding, move them to a place of feeling and openness, and support them to consider what they can do to help.
Piloting STUCK at The Fête of Britain
We were thrilled to pilot STUCK at The Fête of Britain hosted by Aviva Studios on 22nd February. The Fête of Britain was a four-day festival, curated by Hard Art, exploring the pressing issues affecting people in the UK today. We went with our brilliant community group, The Johnny Barlow Theatre Company, who had helped us create the piece. The workshop fitted well with the themes of the event and sparked meaningful conversations about the challenges our communities face, what they need in order to support people, and the action we can take.
“STUCK was extremely moving, a well communicated project, deeply affecting material dealt with sensitively and in a way that takes people on a journey.” – Jamie Kelsey from the Hard Art core team
STUCK taster workshop at the Live Well Movement Launch
We also got to offer a STUCK taster workshop at the Live Well Movement Launch in the Science and Industry Museum a week later. Live Well is Greater Manchester’s movement for community-led health and wellbeing, dedicated to ensuring people have opportunities to be healthy, happy, and connected. Our STUCK workshop taster was part of inspiring all the brilliant discussions being had at this launch event about how we can empower our communities and support all GM citizens to Live Well. We even had Greater Manchester’s Mayor Andy Burnham drop-in!
The feedback from participants of the STUCK taster was really encouraging, on X (formerly Twitter) Rachel shared that the workshop was “incredibly powerful” and Nick said STUCK was “a brilliant way to see us all as people first, not them and us, not patients and professionals, not paid and unpaid, but all of us as people first.”
What’s next for STUCK
Looking ahead, we are excited to tour Tameside with STUCK, including at next month’s TARGET- a CPD event for Primary Care Clinicians.
We are seeking partners to tailor and tour the piece to all the other boroughs in Greater Manchester too, if you’d like us to keep you in the loop about this, or if you have ideas about how we could fund it, or who we could partner with, please sign up to stay in touch:
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