After a year of collaboration with Brighton People’s Theatre (BPT) through the Cultural Bridge initiative, we take a look back at the work we’ve done together and all the things we’ve learned.
English Theatre Leipzig has been a community theatre organisation since 2013, with its core values and activities centered around providing a space and home for theatre-lovers in the English language, regardless of background, heritage or profession. In 2023, 10 years into its existence, we decided to start raising the scope and ambition of ETL to new heights. We wanted to learn how to deepen our practice and sharpen our ability to foster communities. We knew that in order to do so, we would need external help and new insights, so what better way to do so than apply to the Cultural Bridge program? Cultural Bridge is a cultural exchange program designed to let support community art centers do exactly that.
Our connection to BPT was almost serendipitous. A community theatre organisation with the same fundamental beliefs and values, but with different approaches and methodologies to ours. We felt from the first zoom meeting that a partnership between the two companies could be extremely fruitful given the chance. And a chance was what we were given! A year-long support program enabling us to visit each other, exchange ideas and approaches, try out new practices in small and safe ways, and best of all, spend time with people from a different place but with the same vision and drive.
The first thing we noticed when visiting BPT in the summer of 2024 was that they had mastered the skill of bringing strangers together in a fun and welcoming way. They ran two workshops every week, a feat of which ETL at the time could only dream, and were therefore able to build up long-standing communities and cultivate relationships in lasting and meaningful ways. Their work also allowed people to contribute to productions in a real bottom-up way. We watched them foster creative exchange and input by their members to build an upcoming production, and learnt how they actively went out into various communities around Brighton to collect stories using interviews and workshops as material for their shows. True theatre by, from and for the community.
Since visiting BPT and connecting with them several times online over the course of the year, we were inspired to not only refine and reshape our working methodology, but also become more ambitious in our thinking. Whereas previously we had offered short, intensive weekend workshops, we decided to extend this offer through “ETL’s Playhouse”, launched in 2025. ETL’s Playhouse is a community space at our home theatre that offers regular and diverse workshops throughout the year, specifically designed to bring people together and build up relationships over long periods of time. We also adapted our yearly “New Voices” project, a theatre production that offers a platform to up and coming theatre makers, to include more community voices. With New Voices 3: Fairytales from home, we are applying BPT’s methodology of collecting stories and interviews from the community to our work. We can’t wait to see the flavours that it brings to our production.
With our year of official collaboration with BPT coming to an end, we are also excited to continue what has been a mutually fruitful and beneficial relationship. Going forward, BPT and ETL plan to create a ‘living’ theatre archive, hosted virtually online, which will document creative work that is made and act as a stimulus for further creative ideas as time goes on. This way, both companies can continue to learn and evolve alongside each other, letting the work we make illustrate our growth.
We’d like to say a massive thank you to Naomi, Jack, Niamh, and the whole BPT family. You’re welcome in Leipzig any time!