Ruth Middleton is the community producer at the wonderful Slung Low. She remotely connected to tell me about all of the amazing work they do and how she got involved.
Leeds theatre company Slung Low has published a children’s book and launched an initiative that aims to give every child in Holbeck a copy. In early October three of the Slung Low team spent a week at Holbeck’s Ingram Road Primary School reading ‘Emergency Story Penguin’ to the children and gave all 340 of them a copy.
“It was an absolute joy to take the book to the pupils at our localschool, we all loved it,” says Ruth Middleton, Community Producer at Slung Low and one of the readers. “We do a lot of work with the school and when we discovered there were pupils who started at the school without books, we set about changing that. Now every one of those kids has at least one book.”
The company is renowned for both its theatre and the work it does with its local community in South Leeds; they operate a food bank, acultural community college, and manage the country’s oldest working men’s club.
Artistic Director Alan Lane believes that theatre companies should redefine what they do and how they operate. “There are kids in Leeds without books, without crayons - how can that be?” he says. “Every child should have a book and we’redetermined that every kid in Holbeck will have one by Christmas.”
This scheme is the first time the company is selling something that isn’t ‘Pay What You Decide’, but all monies will go back into printing more copies to sell and give away.
The featured track is "Piece of Home" by the wonderful Beth Kilburn.
https://www.slunglow.org/
https://www.slunglow.org/espbook/
https://www.facebook.com/SlunglowTheatre
https://www.twitter.com/slunglow
https://www.facebook.com/beth.kilburn.37
I make no money from this podcast and all I ask is that you enjoy it, tell your friends and if you could leave me a review I would be most grateful.
If you know of someone you think would make a great guest, do get in touch - hazelmillichamp@gmail.com.
Do send an mp3 or a wav if you would like your track featuring on an episode.