Projects

The Lyric’s Art Van brought artists out into the town, where you are, for interactive pop-up happenings of music, art, film puppetry and more. Everyone welcome!

The Lyric secured an Awards for All grant to work in the community in support of the Rights Respecting Town project.

While The Lyric’s doors remained closed at the time, the Right Up Your Street project involved artists going out into the community, rather than The Lyric inviting the public into the building, via the means of the mighty Art Van.

Over five weeks from March to April 2021, five artists from Bridport popped up at different areas of the town in the Art Van, where they threw the doors open to individually present an entertaining and interactive ‘art happening’ in the streets, while promoting equality, wellbeing and respect for our Human Rights. By taking these events out into the community we were keen to reach a genuine cross-section of citizens in a socially-distanced way – and spread a bit of good humour while we were at it!

When it felt like there was nothing left to look forward to in Lockdown 3, we invited everyone to get their teeth into a juicy creative home project: creating a scene from your favourite book as a 3-dimensional window display. These are known as ‘dioramas’. They could be simple or complicated, using materials found around the house.

With the Story Windows project the aims were the same as for the Portrait Challenge – to bring joy to both makers and viewers of the scenes, once again turning streets into galleries for people to enjoy on their daily walks.

We shared examples of dioramas to inspire and start people off, created an inspiration/education pack download and shared people’s Story Windows as they sent them in. It was a project for all ages to take part in, supported by The Book Shop, Bridport, who turned it into a competition with prizes!

Thanks to the hugely generous public support for our Crowdfunder campaign to bring Edwina Bridgeman’s Nativity Scene to Bridport we were thrilled that it was able to happen for the festive season following a difficult year. During December passers by enjoyed a beautifully illuminated handmade Nativity Scene at The Lyric.

Professional theatre designer and renowned artist Edwina Bridgeman made an exquisitely hand crafted, unique Nativity scene installation for The Lyric to own, which was displayed in our foyer during December for the public to enjoy at social distance. Edwina was keen for it to be at The Lyric so very generously gifted two thirds of her time in creating it. The money raised via Crowdfunder went towards the remainder of her artist’s fee plus 100 peg doll kits so that local children can participate creatively, adding to the installation.

Edwina said, “I think the work is perfect for The Lyric, it is made to be explored, celebrates universal creativity and is for all of us. The Nativity scene is created from found objects, many of them found on the beach nearby. Setting the Nativity in the beautiful Lyric Theatre coupled with Bridport’s proximity to the sea feels so right for this unique interpretation of the Christmas story.”

At the end of an unprecedented year, many of our usual traditions leading up to that Christmas, involving spending time with loved ones, were put on hold or adapted to accommodate the times. As a theatre we had been closed to the public for performances or workshops since March, and December is one of our favourite times of year to present work for families. While we still could not do that, we were delighted to spread joy in this way instead. There was hope and peace to be taken from this scene of birth, new life and humility, and Edwina’s incredibly delicate creations cannot help but enchant onlookers. The scene may also bring to mind the African proverb “it takes a village to raise a child”, echoing the importance of community.

It is our intention that the Nativity scene, while housed at The Lyric, will be a beautiful community resource for schools or community groups to borrow in the years to come, to display in their setting whilst perhaps raising funds for themselves or their charity of choice.

Equal rights = we’re all equal, right? During the summer holidays 2020 we worked in partnership with Bridport Rights Respecting Town to champion an exciting Portrait Challenge for the whole community to get involved in.

The Portrait Challenge was a way for us to celebrate seeing each other again after lockdown lifted, by painting or drawing the faces of people we missed and people we love. It was a chance to make our treasured friends, family and neighbours visible by putting their portraits in our windows and turning our streets into an art gallery!

For five weeks we challenged everyone, young and old, to draw, paint, scribble or sketch each other and populate our town with a mass gathering of US! After such tricky times, this was a way to connect with someone you haven’t seen for a while, or to spend time with someone (at a safe distance) and turn them into a work of art, a family heirloom!

People sketched in cafés with materials provided, and artists ran pop-up portrait lessons around the town, in parks and online, culminating in a mass portrait drawing day at Bucky Doo Square on August bank holiday weekend.

At the end of an unprecedented year, many of our usual traditions leading up to that Christmas, involving spending time with loved ones, were put on hold or adapted to accommodate the times. As a theatre we had been closed to the public for performances or workshops since March, and December is one of our favourite times of year to present work for families. While we still could not do that, we were delighted to spread joy in this way instead. There was hope and peace to be taken from this scene of birth, new life and humility, and Edwina’s incredibly delicate creations cannot help but enchant onlookers. The scene may also bring to mind the African proverb “it takes a village to raise a child”, echoing the importance of community.

It is our intention that the Nativity scene, while housed at The Lyric, will be a beautiful community resource for schools or community groups to borrow in the years to come, to display in their setting whilst perhaps raising funds for themselves or their charity of choice.

The Bridport Black Lives Matter Banner was the pilot project of The Lyric Theatre’s Curtain Up On Communities initiative (set up as a Crowdfunder campaign to raise money for community projects while we could not open the Lyric to the public during the pandemic). The Lyric wanted to help be a voice and a place that could contribute.

The Lyric donated the stage curtains to make the backdrop for the Bridport Black Lives Matter banner. The banner was hand stitched together by local people (observing social distancing) who discussed issues of race and privilege as they sewed and were reminded that it is possible to have friendly and enlightening conversations about these vital issues.

The banner was then carried through the village of Symondsbury in a cortege style procession and unfurled on iconic Colmer’s Hill, where it was filmed by a drone cameraman.

The images were posted on social media and shared widely, and over £1000 was raised via Crowdfunder by partnering Bridport with Bronx Defenders, protecting black lives in New York during the protests against the killing of black man George Floyd by 3 police officers who knelt on him until he died.

The banner went on to be hosted by other villages and rural sites, and can be draped in the landscape to be filmed by a drone camera. In this way small rural communities can show solidarity with their urban counterparts without breaking pandemic restrictions. Please contact us if you are interested in borrowing the banner.

This showcase was developed in partnership with ArtfulScribe and Apples & Snakes as part of the DO:Write project.

We had been wanting to start a scratch night at The Lyric for some time, so when ArtfulScribe came to us asking if we would be interested in running a joint scratch night with them we jumped at the chance. Scratch & Spit took place bi-monthly; the first half consisted of up to six 5-minute scratch slots (signed up on the night), then two more developed 10-minute scratch slots (to be pre-booked), followed by a professional headline spoken word piece after the interval programmed by ArtfulScribe. All brilliantly compered by Rob Casey. The headline pieces often had leanings into comedy or physical theatre.

house is a venue network and touring initiative based in the South East of England. It is delivered by Farnham Maltings with support from Arts Council England and an advisory group of venue leaders, programmers and producers from the region. It was established in 2012. house supports venues to improve the range, quality and scale of theatre presented across South East England and exists to build the audience for contemporary theatre across the region. It does this by supporting venues and artists to develop audiences and by helping to create a long-term infrastructure for touring.

The Lyric was invited to be part of the house network in 2014 and through it we programmed some fantastic work, from performers who have mostly come back to us with other shows since then, including Smoking Apples, Greg Wohead, Greyscale, Puppetstate, The Pretend Men and The Thelmas.

An open call for the community to take part in the development of a new piece of theatre in Bridport.

Working with the support of three experienced lead artists the community was invited to become part of an ensemble group tasked with creating puppets, music and performance for a brand new family friendly show. This R&D was a partnership between The Lyric, Stuff & Nonsense and Bridport Electric Palace, funded by Dorset Community Foundation and Arts Council England.

Over a series of workshop sessions many ideas were explored by community members, many with no previous experience, alongside professional artists, with no fixed outcome set from the start but led by ideas.

The lead artists heading up the three workshop troupes were Holly Miller with the puppet makers, Robert Lee with the music makers and Niki McCretton with the performers. Working as separate groups they came together as the sessions progressed to share their ideas and work so far, culminating in a community sharing to close the R&D.