Award winner Theatre Peckham launches inaugural Peckham Fringe Festival

Since winning the COVID-19 Business Commitment To Education, Training & Skills sponsored by Art Invest Real Estate, Theatre Peckham has continued to diversify and grow, launching a festival and hiring more staff.

“Since winning the Southwark Business Resilience Awards, Theatre Peckham has continued to move towards a more hybrid way of working ensuring our colleagues work remotely at least one day a week to allow employees to save money on travel and reduce our carbon footprint and improve employee well-being.

“The children and young people’s programmes including workshops and outreach activities have all returned to in-person teaching and learning, giving us the chance to also visit schools and take students on trips, one being an exhibition curated by Afro-Caribbean artists; the students loved that we were able to finally come together and return to doing fun outdoor activities.

“Our building has remained open to the public and we are excited to announce the launch of our Peckham Fringe Festival, which commences 2nd of May to the 5th of June and features 61.81% of shows presented by people living within the Southwark and nearby boroughs.

“We have also resumed recruiting new staff. Responding to the knock-on effect Covid-19 had on our young people, our initiative was to actively recruit those aged 18 – 25 to provide them with the prospect of gaining new skills, training opportunities and the overall experience of working in a stable job. This included our first ever resident companies of Theatre Makers. Since October we have recruited a number of full-time, part-time roles and freelance contracts. As of today, 57% of our core team are of the global majority, 54% are 25 or under.

“To continue our initiative of up-skilling our team we have provided further training opportunities such as Mental Health First Aid as well as inviting external speakers to provide training on topics such as ‘HR for non-HR managers’ to improve leadership and motivational skills as well as create a path towards achieving organisational goals.

“For the majority of last year our staff worked remotely without attending the office. As a result, we have realised how important physical interaction is for our mental health. We have since introduced more team-oriented activities such as team lunches, walks and Monday motivation activities to help create a sense of togetherness, increase productivity, and raise morale.

“Winning the award has helped us to build back our sense of achievement, especially after facing a difficult year for the arts. We submitted our application and couldn’t believe that we won. It has been wonderful to be recognised not just for the work we do in our community but also for how we as a company are resilient through tough times. Since winning the award we went on to be nominated for three Off West End Awards (OFFIE’s) for our self-producing productions and were successful in winning two of them.

“This award has encouraged us to continue powering towards creating a representative and inclusive theatre that promotes positive change and demonstrates resilience in the face of adversity. Theatre Peckham continues as a collaborative non-hierarchical theatre 55% of our staff and 55% of our Board are Black, Asian or ethnically diverse and 62% of our staff team are aged under 30. With a commitment to representation Theatre Peckham leads the change that is influencing the arts sector.”

Theatre Peckham Artistic Director, Suzann McLean, and Head of Communications, Annette Brook