Education & Community

The Occasion regards community outreach projects as having equal worth to professional touring productions and seeks to ensure that all work shares the same values and high production standards.

The main themes for this work are:

Promoting creative collaboration
Innovating by extending the boundaries of highly visual and physical theatre
Encouraging and facilitating social and personal development
Developing new and extant audiences

The Occasion uses drama to contribute to personal and social development and as a way for individuals and groups to explore and enjoy their own creativity.

Our programmes – for promoters, local authorities, education and independent groups – include:

• workshops across a range of ages and sectors
• intensive residences
• training in workshop preparation and delivery
• added value activities: tours of the set, post-show discussions
• cross art-form and multimedia projects.

The Occasion is fully committed to providing opportunities across all sections of society and will, whenever possible, respond to all requests for new activity.

All projects seek to demystify the process of creating theatre, to teach new skills and to involve all participants in all stages of the work, working to the fullness of all their abilities.

The Occasion is also currently looking to expand activity into new geographical areas. For any requests, or enquiries, for future projects please contact us at: info@theoccasiontheatre.com

History & Past Projects

Over the past twenty-five years The Occasion’s joint Artistic Directors – Peter Clerke and Catherine Gillard – have been involved in an eclectic range of education and outreach projects. These have included large-scale community performances, residencies, workshop programmes and discussion forums; have involved people of all ages and all abilities; encompassed work in community centres, colleges, schools, day centres, mental health projects, youth theatres & arts centres; and operated on both a national and international scale.

Major achievements have been:

• A series of innovative and highly successful collaborations, specifically targeted at learning disabled adults, with Aberdeen’s The Lemon Tree, including three large-scale, multi-media performances, film and installation projects and training programmes. The collaboration led to the formation of the company for learning disabled adults, Va Va Voom, who are now permanently based at The Lemon Tree.
• The delivery of over 100 separate workshops, as part of benchtours‘ audience development programme in conjunction with touring productions.
• The creation of a fully-inclusive performance company, in collaboration with The Brunton Theatre, Musselburgh and the production of Mayhem (2005) and The Invisible Man – or A Brief History of Invisibility in East Lothian (2006) featuring casts of 80 and 40 respectively.

• The development and implementation of a ‘Leading Drama Workshops’ training programme for learning disabled adults, in collaboration with Lung Ha’s Theatre company.
• The direction of the community arts programme for The Edinburgh Puppet Lab’s Big Man Walking project in Kirkcaldy, Fife.