ActSmart: Worcester’s first 15 minute city project, explored through the lens of drama and technology
ActSmart, Our new theatre project is a little different to your usual drama club experience. Instead of doing a production like Macbeth or Hamilton, In January we plan to re-invent the city of Worcester into a 15 minute city.
What is it?
This popular concept is a newly established way of planning our towns and cities that intends to transform how we live in urban environments, by making everything you need into a walkable/cyclable in 15 minute excursion. From Gym’s to theatre’s to parks and more.
The reason this is being introduced into cities all around the world, such as Paris, San Fransisco and many others, is largely to tackle the climate crisis. As places are further away from our homes, we spend more and more time commuting and essentially spending more resources getting from A to B or C or D on a regular basis. The French columbian scientist Carlos Moreno, who came up with the concept says
“Cities are wonderful and vibrant places, with concentration of creativity, diversity and innovation. But as cities have becoming larger, urban functions have become spread out and we have lost the proximity between people, activities and places.”
One of the ways this may be fulfilled is by having places as multi purpose spaces that can be used for various daily activities. You might have a night club that doubles up as a gym in the day, or we reduce big car parking areas, enabling more opportunity for walking and greener spaces for family and friends to use.
The 15 minute city and Prospero
At Prospero we thought to ourselves…. SO what would happen if we applied this framework into a drama workshop?
What if we could use our new drama workshops as a way to re-invent the city, as a way for young creatives to excavate there own city, to explore their own ideas of what they want out of there local neighbourhoods.
By using Prospero’s GPS technology, we are able to make this possible, by embedding the students own narratives and ideas into the city.
At the end of the workshop students will be able to go around pointing their phones around their local area, triggering stories and narratives created by them over the course of our workshops. This will then be available for others to experience through Prospero, as they walk around the city.
This is a chance for students to think outside the box of what they want their local community to be or look like, by fusing drama and technology into their urban environment.
Who can participate?
We will be running 3 different age groups: 5 - 7, 8 - 11 and 12-16. Each group will re-think and prioritise their own themes, ideas and interests. For example 5-7 years olds might just want bouncy castles everywhere, the 8-11 years group might want more play spaces, whilst the 12- 16 year olds might want another a gym or a cinema. The options are endless and all down to them!
Our ambition is simply to create an alternative experience that is engaged in allowing young people to explore more ways of getting more out of there cities. After all, they will be running the show before long! Our aim is also to engage more fully with our environment, we like to consider drama & technology as a set of tools for their imagination to run wild in both in the physical and the digital world. We see the technology we use as a way to illuminate the things we couldn’t see before.
Who is the collaboration with?
We are very excited to announce that this project will also be taking place in New York, so there is a chance for collaboration between us and our friends across the pond. Students in the USA will re-imagining there own neighbourhoods through our creative learning software:,Prospero. Our resident practitioner in Nairobi, Kenya , Peter Litonde, will also be running ActSmart, so there’s plenty of opportunities to share and exchange alternative ways of exploring and thinking.
We only have a limited numbers of spaces for this project in Worcester, but there are still some available! To book or to find out more you can can use the links below. We hope to have you join us this January for a new type of drama!
Our hub for ActSmart projects currently takes place at The Royal Porcelain Works. We hope to see you there!
To Book your space or to find out more, click this link!