Finding our voice

 In 2012, we created ‘Horace’; a mixed media comedy about love, life and everything in between. Horace was performed in venues across Nottinghamshire, including the Southwell Folk Festival on the same stage as Jools Holland and for the World Event Young Artists (WEYA) International Theatre Festival in The Mighty Creatives’ mobile space. We also participated and presented at the first national conference for learning disability arts: Embrace Create Connect, at Attenborough Arts in Leicester.

 In 2014, Unanima moved to Mansfield and became Company in Residence at The Old Library Media and Arts Venue. We recruited a new cast and achieved Arts Council England funding to create new play ‘Love. Life. No Sat Nav’.

With further Arts Council and Nottinghamshire County Council funding we undertook a period of stagecraft workshops to support the company to be tour ready, culminating in a successful six venue East Midlands tour with ‘Love. Life. No Sat Nav’.

Sadly, Unanima bid farewell to some members and to our beloved Director Jayne Williams in 2017 (Jayne is changing the world with her brilliant skills and writing everywhere!).

We made a new start in 2018. We were successful with ACE funding and brought in new company members and new practitioners; Director Pete Shenton and Associate Artist Angela Warren, a new exciting period of co-production began. We devised a new play that explored identity and held three performances at our home theatre in October/November 2018.

A new partnership with Nottingham University’s YALLiD Research Group supports Unanima to achieve further ACE funding to create a new piece of theatre about the lived experience of having an intellectual disability for both individuals and carers.

In 2019, ‘State of Independence’ was developed in co-production with our cast and performed to sell out audiences in Mansfield and Nottingham. We had a further change and said a fond farewell to the wonderful Angela Warren, whose fabulous voice and energy we will miss.
Elements of the piece were given a raucous injection and performed at the ‘Making Our Mark’ scratch night at Attenborough Arts to great audience reviews - we had suddenly found our groove and we applied for a larger ACE pot to take this work further.

We received access money from ACE in order to co-write this next bid with our ensemble of practitioners, ensuring that the direction we proposed to head in was where they wanted to go.