Following my projects in Senegal, working with the community of an entire village to build a piece of theatre intended to be performed in the country's established performing spaces, I was interested to hear more about this sort of practice in the UK.

We talked about participant care and audience care:
Each project is individual and it is hard to define what is the best way to go about it. A good rule is to always keep asking 'why am I doing this'? - throughout the process. What are the participants getting out of it? What is the audience getting out of it? Do we want to work with a community or 'use' them to satisfy other ambitions?
Remember to always care - accompany participants who might not have experience with the performing arts, and make the process transparent for them (what will their involvement entail? / what are the difficult aspects of it? or just things like - what is a dress rehearsal / tech rehearsal?). Build projects over long time periods, nurture strong relationships.

We discussed projects of this kind:
- London Stories - BAC
- Suppliant Women, Young Vic
- Young Vic Parallel Productions
- Julius Caesar Must Die by Tariani Brothers
- Wild Life FM at The Unicorn, made by children for children.
- Be Next at Birmingham festival

We talked about what 'professional' means vs 'non-professional'.
Is it support in terms of institution, money, or experience? What qualifies as professional? Didn't really get to the bottom of that I think.