At Barefoot Opera our community engagement is paramount.
We have built up strong relationships with various community groups and charities in the East Sussex area – running workshops and performances and linking groups together. This is all interactive – our aim is to encourage everyone to get involved: breathing, singing, moving, and creating together. The culmination of these relationships is our people’s opera Bloom Britannia which was performed in October 2021 in Hastings, featuring over 100 community members alongside professional singers and musicians.
Barefoot Opera’s Artistic Director Jenny Miller inspired the birth of a choir at the Seaview Centre (a local charity who work with vulnerable adults) in 2010 and we now regularly perform and create with them. Each year we collaborate to perform a Christmas concert attracting over 300 people – we even managed in December 2020 – although this time we were online only.
When Hastings Borough Council put out a call for local arts practitioners to create special projects around the Norman conquest for international arts festival ‘Root 1066’ Barefoot Opera successfully bid for and created ‘Clash!’, a choral event for 7 diverse local choirs, with 7 new choral commissions and a unique performance experience in Hastings College Atrium.
Groups we work with in East Sussex
- Seaview Centre
- The Refugee Buddy Project
- MSL Projects
- Education Futures Trust
- Hastings Contemporary
- Eggtooth
- Red Kite
- Dudley Infants School
- Robsack Wood Primary Academy
- Hollington Primary Academy
- The Baird Primary Academy
- Ore Village Primary Academy
- Hastings Academy
- Bexhill Academy
- De La Warr Pavilion
- St Mary in the Castle
- Battle Festival
- Coastal Currents Festival
- Audiotrope
- Isolation Station
- Arts on Prescription
- East Sussex Music
