Celebrating 10 years of Beyond Face

We have spent the last few months celebrating the 10th Birthday of Beyond Face. Back in August, we marked the celebrations with our board, partners, artists and participants of our work and in March we celebrated with a We are here to Share event showcasing four new pieces of work from artists across two of our strands of work. 

Our Birthday campaign seeks to speak to three key areas: celebration, advocacy and the future. In the arts we are so quick to finish a project or a show and to immediately move onto the next thing without truly marking the celebration of what occurred. So, over the next few weeks we will be sharing moments of reflection and images of the work from the last 10 years of Beyond Face.

I set up Beyond Face in 2015 as a result of a group of Black teenagers in Plymouth telling me that theatre wasn’t for people like them. After a period of time speaking to more young people, the same comment was shared. When I asked if there was something that was specifically for them, would they attend? There was a strong response of “yes please”. So, in August 2015, I ran a summer school and made the decision that a theatre company was definitely the right way forward. 

Over the last ten years we have: 

-Engaged in a  number of youth exchanges and youth company productions, a highlight being Where’s Abi? A new musical written by Titilola Dawudu and in partnership with Plymouth Music Zone. 

- We toured our professional production work in the South West, London and Manchester. 

- We have partnered on brilliant projects with the Barbican Theatre Plymouth, Tamasha theatre company, Talawa, Doorstep Arts to name a few. 

- In 2021 we launched our Artist Development programme officially, and this month we celebrate 5 years of our We are here to Write programme, and now we have launched an exciting new offer for writers.

- In 2022 we joined the Arts Council National Portfolio enabling us to strengthen our offering and play a more crucial role in the South West Theatre ecology. 

- We have grown into an incredible team all who are artists and cultural producers offering a richness to Beyond Face’s programme, to the team this is a celebration of you too!

Now we have four strong areas of work that offer a rich and meaningful offer to artists, young people and audiences. We exist to ensure that the South West is a place where people from Global Majority backgrounds can not only experience the arts, but that they can thrive and be amongst an organisation that cares about what stories they want to tell and also where they want to develop their skills. 

I am incredibly proud of the growth of Beyond Face and all that we have achieved. I was told at the beginning by some people that this would never work in a place like Devon. We have proven that it is working and we continue to go from strength to strength. 

We will be speaking more on the advocacy and future part of the birthday campaign in the coming months, so do keep an eye out for that, but what I will say, despite its cliché, is the constantly heard statement of “Theatre is needed more than ever” because it is true and we do need to keep saying and showing this. Stories we have to tell are needed more than ever and the opportunities for artists to make and grow work is needed more than ever too, alongside the need for stronger relationships and an increase of advocating for theatre to not just be the responsibility for those of us making the work. Arts Education has been hugely impacted, and we know alongside with our partners just how valuable opportunities to express yourself and find your voice is, so we are really going to be diving into how we as an organisation can support this.

Beyond Face is often misunderstood as to what our focus is but we hope with our new refresh that people will clearly recognise our four areas of work and see that we are an artist led company that makes our own work. Whilst the touring scene is meeting its challenges, we will not be shying away and will continue to bring our work to stages across the country. 

This campaign is about a 10 year birthday but it’s also so much more than that. It’s a thank you to those who have worked with us and a thank you to the artists and companies who have come before Beyond Face. It’s a celebration of the past and the future to come. I'm excited for the next decade. 

-Alix,

CEO & Artistic Director