Odd Arts
Odd Arts are a theatre organisation that work within criminal justice, education, community & health settings. All of our theatre work is aimed at reducing & challenging inequalities, and increasing opportunities for people facing the greatest level of discrimination or disadvantage.
We work in 3 main ways:
- Interactive Theatre tours (issues include mental health, knife crime, sexual assault, exploitation and many more)
- Therapeutic Theatre Workshops (often aiming to reduce violence or harm to self and others; or increase wellbeing)
- Community led social action projects (using theatre, visual arts, story-telling and film to address systemic inequalities)
All our work is underpinned by:
- Anti-racism
- Trauma informed approaches
- Uses non-violent communication & restorative approaches
- Developed with people with lived experience of the issues we address
We work in Greater Manchester & the North West and Midlands. We work with over around 30,000 people per year, including around 80 high schools. Other settings include secure units, PRUs, mental health units, prisons, community centres, youth groups, probation, and asylum-seeking / refugee organisations.
Our work addressing cohesion, violence reduction, wellbeing & countering violent extremism has receiving the following accolade:
- 3 formal academic papers published on it’s impact
- Published in the ‘Applied Theatre Journal’ and ‘How to become a less violent society’
- Received commission for best practices in preventing radicalisation at EU Parliament
- Alumni of the US Embassy Exchange on Countering Violent Extremism