The Beginnings: Starting Arc 1984: Blog 27

Westbury Centre Barking

Good morning,

Its good to be back writing this post at 6.15 am with a coffee in hand and my headphones on listening to the Cranberries. The focus of my last few days has been on the next five-year business plan for Arc. I need to have it in draft form ready for our Board meeting next week. Planning is always ongoing, we can never afford to stand still, especially not in a tough climate. 

We have to be prepared to review our own work critically and to assess how we move forward artistically and economically. We have had to do this for the past 29 years since Olly and I started Arc. There can never be space for complacency, and we need to take a hard look at what we do well and what we could do better. In doing so I find myself reflecting on where we have been, where we are now and where we want to go next.

So this brings me to ponder the very beginning of this lifetime project and how much has changed in the years since we began the company in 1984. So much is different now, not least the revolution that the internet has brought to the world. Back in 1984 we were still using typewriters and carbon paper, and there wasn't a mobile phone in sight. I do wonder how we ever got anything done! But we did.

Olly and I met in 1983 and got married that same year. From the start we knew that we wanted to make our own work. Both of us had been working as actors and we met at the Theatre Royal Stratford in the spring of '83 on an exciting young people's International Theatre Festival, NIFTIE which was being hosted by Ian Bowater at the theatre. We worked extensively with a company (Network) from New York run by Laurie Meadoff and Dexter Locke. Laurie has set up and run a number of successful companies, including her NYC based Citykids foundation which has done some amazing work using the arts with disadvantaged young people. 

That experience was the starting point for Olly and I to imagine and set up our own company. It meant that we had to put all our energy and focus into making it a reality. We were totally inexperienced, in our very early twenties and full of hope and excitement. Its probably a good thing that we didn't know what we didn't know or maybe we would never have started Arc!  But that's the joy of being young and whilst we may be a bit long in the tooth now we still retain the curiosity and passion in spite of and probably because of the many extraordinary times we have had making theatre over those years. 

Getting anything started is a challenge, especially when you have no money! There was a scheme at that time called the Enterprise Allowance Scheme. It was a bit of a ruse to get people off income support, but it worked really well for us. We had to put down £1000 and it was matched by the government. We then got £40 per week each as a basis wage. It really got us off the ground. And the generous food parcels from our parents too! 

Olly got started as a storyteller in schools. We literally scoured the yellow pages for all the names and addresses of the local primary schools in Waltham Forest Newham and Redbridge. We lived in a tiny flat in Forest Gate. I called the headteachers, and Olly put his guitar on his back and we got the bus to the different schools. Our marketing tactics were pretty time consuming. We would pitch up in a Head's office and Olly would get out his guitar and tell them a story with original songs. He was pretty good at wowing them, and 99% of the time we walked out with a commitment to a day of storytelling. Olly developed an excellent interactive format for creating stories with children and we called his project Oliver's Tales. A good friend designed a logo for us  - Olly has it currently on his Facebook page. I remember that we charged £60 a day which was a lot of money in 1984!  

Oliver's Tales was really critical in getting Arc off the ground and it was a hugely successful project for about 8 years. Olly was booked pretty much every day in schools and at festivals in London and around the UK and early on a big tour in Dubai. For my part I was a visiting theatre lecturer at the then named Leicester Polytechnic (now De Montford University) on their Performing Arts degree. I got much of my directorial experience making work with students there. This and Oliver's Tales funded the company. Thanks to that income I was in a position to make a new piece of solo performance which was written by Polly Teale and directed by Julia Bardsley. I had met them both through the National Student Drama Festival for which I was a judge.  

We rehearsed it in Barking way back then, at the Westbury Centre in Ripple Road which was then used at the Teacher's Centre for the Council. At that time I was still acting and the show was a fantastic collaboration with Polly and Julia. Julia was an extremely talented director and went on to have great success with her work with Phelim McDermott and much since. She is primarily a visual artist and this talent informed her direction in a unique way.


We made the show Fallen about a young Irish woman who was accused of murdering her baby in county Kerry. I had read the story in the Sunday Times and was fascinated about it, the catholic backdrop, the moral issues of sexual infidelity and the emotional experience of this 24 year old young woman - Joanne Hayes. She was vilified for having firstly had an affair with a married man, getting pregnant and then allegedly murdering their child. She had had to go into hiding, and Polly and I went off to a secret location in Dublin where we met her with the guy who was to write her book. The case was to become known as the Kerry Babies Case. Its a painful and fascinating case that made a big legal shift in Ireland following a tribunal into her treatment.

We took the show to the Edinburgh Festival, and had a rubbish slot at 10am at St Mary's Church Hall. As we were on a shoestring and self-funded as most shows are, we camped just outside the city! Much to our delight we got great houses and reviews and ended up with a Fringe First. 

This opened up a whole new world for us. The show was picked up by Julie Parker and Mavis Seamen from the Drill Hall Arts Centre (now no longer) in Camden. We were given a three week run, a PR company and money. It was amazing. The London run got good reviews and we took on a management company to book a national small scale theatre tour. It was the most fabulous experience, and such a huge learning curve. 

The company, with its mix of education, storytelling and solo performance was off the ground! 

Heady days. I feel quite nostalgic as I think of them now - and of course look back at how life unfolds magically, with one thing leading to the next. And here we are again at the next crossroad as we relentlessly reinvent ourselves. Its been a blast so far!

Have a lovely Sunday.