"I feel passionately about the power of shared stories and experiences" - We catch up with Furnace Artist Rachael Mainwaring

Community is at the heart of what we do and we are especially proud of our Furnace community engagement programme, that sees theatre makers from The REP working in five different Furnace Hubs around Birmingham to engage and create theatre together.

In a series of blogs, we will be following the journey of our Furnace Artists as they work within the local community, starting with Rachel Mainwaring's work in Ward End and Perry Barr… 

Hello! My name is Rachael Mainwaring and I am delighted to be part of The REP's Furnace programme to present Our Feast. I am working in North Birmingham alongside two women's community groups; The Dolphin Centre in Ward End and The Birchfield Big Local in Perry Barr.

I love working with women and I feel passionately about the power of shared stories and experiences, especially from people whose voices have perhaps been previously unheard. I am working with an incredibly diverse mix of women, with different backgrounds and interests and I'm excited to see how this will influence our final piece.

I have been visiting these groups since January, meeting and connecting with women in Ward End, Alum Rock and Perry Barr and I continue to be blown away by the amazing way in which these groups work tirelessly to support local women. Our initial group sessions were spent exchanging stories and discussing issues that these women felt passionately about and we discovered that even within such a diverse group of women, we had a lot more in common than we initially thought…

The title of the project is Our Feast - I want it to be a celebration. A feast of stories, a feast of experiences and importantly a feast in the literal sense - yummy food! As a group, we have discussed the theme of food and the way in which cooking for others is often an act of friendship and love used to welcome, socialise and connect with each other. We discussed our favourite meals and used improvisation to create a 'feast'. The women were amazing, using their fantastic imaginations to bring our feast to life by describing what we might eat, drink and even the music we could dance to!

At The Dolphin Centre, we were joined by Sahra who I had seen perform at a community event for International Women's Day where she had shared a beautiful story about her childhood in Jordan. I invited her to join us and retell the story for our group as well as discuss her experience of performing within the local community. The group were very moved by her story and admired her bravery. Meeting Sahra undeniably inspired many of the women within the group and I'm looking forward to hearing more of these amazing stories throughout this project.

Keep an eye out on our blog for regular updates from our Furnace artists, and find out more about all the Furnace projects here.