Hi, Laura here. I joined Boundless in April as Head of Communications & Development, and I wanted to catch you up on some of the stuff that’s been going on behind the scenes. With a new leadership team running the show, there’s been some big thinking about how Boundless can best work with and serve young people and communities in Croydon, amidst an evolving and challenging cultural landscape.
Knowing this, one of the first things I wanted to do was create space for us to reflect, dream, interrogate and articulate, together, who we are, what we do, why & how we do it. So I developed Boundless on Paper, a workshop series that brought the team together to question everything and collaboratively shape a refreshed mission, manifesto, and a way of talking about our work.
Over several weeks, we went back to the basics; working our way through these sessions:
- why, why, why?: questioning all the components of Boundless (past & present), to help us understand our purpose, and consider letting go of things that don’t serve us
- what’s the point?: some boundless dreaming, to collectively consider our vision – for the world; for the arts; for Boundless
- the Boundless sauce: discussing our methodologies, practice, values and actions
- put it in the box: a categorisation game to help understand the focuses, outputs and outcomes of our work, and how they intersect
- our orbit: building a positioning map; understanding our place (present & future) amongst the cultural sector and locally
- guess that company: a guessing game based on the vision or mission statements of other companies, to understand our perception of organisations, and inspire us
- changing the world: looking at the ways our work contributes to social & climate justice, and how we might strengthen & forefront those ambitions
- keep it or bin it: an exercise exploring the language and messaging we use (past & present)
- what’s the big impact? developing organisational evaluation frameworks that measure and guide the outcomes of our work
Our chats felt both slow and seismic. At times we had collective lightbulb moments, and other times it felt like we were going in circles; dancing around answers just out of reach. One of the most challenging sessions was put it in the box. Trying to categorise some of our projects made us realise how many intersections we sit across, and opened up some deep thinking about existing labels and definitions in the industry. I had in mind that we might come away from this session with a clear idea of our main focus, e.g. ‘we are an artist development organisation’, or ‘we’re focused on community arts’, but instead it highlighted the various layers of our work and where we have an impact. Ultimately, we had to abandon the exercise because we found that what we really wanted to do was redesign the boxes we were trying to fit into.
Trying to balance our radical hopes with the realities of working in a system we’re trying to change became a key thread. We want to dismantle oppressive structures and help people navigate them, support ‘career pathways’ and question the idea of careers altogether. How do we destroy the ladder, whilst also climbing it? (more chat about that on our fluffy stuff podcast here)
Another challenge we encountered was how we articulate elements of our strategy that don’t represent our current reality. One of the things we put in the bin (in the keep it or bin it session) was ‘naming a thing before we’re doing it’, so we wanted to ensure we are talking plainly and honestly about what Boundless does – without exaggerations. For example, working deeply with young people and communities in Croydon is a big part of our strategy, but in reality we’re just scratching the surface – so how do we represent that ambition and direction without saying something that isn’t fully true yet?
It’s easy to talk about the organisation we want to be – but it’s braver to acknowledge where we actually are.
So, where are we now?
Following the team workshops, I cracked on with the ‘on paper’ bit – working on some variations of mission, purpose, vision, values & about statements. As you can see from the screenshot above, our sessions produced 100s of sticky notes, each containing important nuggets of wisdom, insights and directives from the team. The first big task was to distil these and find the common threads to prioritise when articulating Boundless. Some examples include:
- Care. We spoke a lot about care in relation to our ‘Why’ and our ‘How’. We envisioned a world where care is easier to practice – an idea closely tied to our vision for anti-individualism, internationalism, community, collaboration, and social & climate justice – all of which depend on a foundation of care. We also noted that care is integral to our practice. We share a belief that the arts are uniquely placed to cultivate care, by fostering empathy, connection, shared understanding and collective experience – both in the process of making, and in the engagement with the art itself.
- Joy. Play. Curiosity. Trust. Common threads that are important to us, and stuff we want to be outcomes of our work, as well as a key part of our practice and process.
- Everything is everything. A Pav-ism that speaks to the way we live our values at every level, and that our practice (the ‘How’) – the small everyday things – is a core part of our ‘What’.
- Real talk. Speaking from the heart; ensuring our personality can shine through our words & voice – which involves a bit of unlearning of some of the more corporate/industry speak.
The drafting stages looked like this…
We’re happy to share our new Mission & About statements, and a new Manifesto – an embodiment of our values and the Boundless practice:
Manifesto
Don’t rush; build trust.
Be curious. Dream radically.
Meet people where they are.
Joy is resistance. Knowledge is power.
Shake up the system; rebuild it together.
More care / care more.
Mission
Boundless makes space for young people to create, connect, and lead.
We work with 15–25 year olds, co-creating projects that put young voices in charge. Whether it’s taking part or leading the way, we back young people to shape the future of the arts – and beyond.
We’re rooted in Croydon and support young creatives across the UK. Whether it’s a project round the corner or global collabs, we show up with curiosity, creativity, and trust. Our work is grounded in care, and together with young people, we call the world to care more, because we think that’s where real change begins.
What we do
Our programme is boundless. What started with plays on stages has grown to involve all kinds of creative projects – from podcasts and music to performances on the phone and through the post. You might catch us in the park mixing tunes on a random Sunday, but you’ll also find us on the frontlines of youth-led change. We’ve produced international festivals, hosted youth summits, and brought radical imagination into schools. We grow big ideas through Accelerator, our artist development programme, and sow the seeds through our wider ecosystem, Boundless Drama Club.
Through our projects, creatives get the chance to meet people, exchange ideas, make stuff together, boost their skills, flex their curiosity and make noise in the industry.
Our Compass of Care keeps us accountable: every project we do contributes to social and climate justice in ways big and small. If it’s not making things better, we’re not doing it.
Young people are the experts on young people. Our Advisory Group and Young Leadership roles drive the work, keeping us grounded in listening, advocacy and activism.
What’s next?
New shoots have sprung from this process. Our chats around Boundless’ social purpose and connection to climate justice (big shout out to Farah Ahmed here who led us through some enlightening CJ training and really opened up this way of thinking for us) have led us to develop a new ‘Compass of Care’. We’ll be talking more about this soon, but in short, we’re building a greenlighting and project design tool that uncompromisingly aligns our work with social & climate justice.
We’re also deep diving into how we reflect on and evaluate our work – based on four organisational pillars that we think capture the key outcomes of Boundless: Care, Advocacy, Knowledge, Exchange/Connection (yep, CAKE).
More updates on these projects-in-progress soon!
Got any questions about this work? Feel free to drop me a line and we can chat: laura@boundlesstheatre.org.uk