Phosphoros Theatre

Phosphoros Theatre builds bravery, creativity, and belonging for young refugees and asylum seekers, co-delivered by practitioners who have experienced forced migration.

AMPLIFYING REFUGEE VOICES

Phosphoros Theatre creates ambitious, relevant, and bold public productions recognised for artistic excellence, focused on amplifying refugee voices and bringing them to the main stage. The young people we work with face significant challenges; isolation, language barriers, social and educational exclusion, poor mental health, precarious housing situations and immigration status. Our drama work breaks down these barriers, valuing performance, creativity, and teamwork as tools for young people to feel included, supported, and able to advocate for themselves. 

CREATIVELY REFRAMING NARRATIVES

We collaborate with artists, audiences, and participants with lived experience of forced migration. Focusing on the experiences of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, we invite the public to listen, learn, and advocate for change. Our creative approach reframes familiar and dominant narratives of refugees, looking beyond reductive media headlines to listen to communities themselves. Our radical theatre work rejects binary representations of refugees as threatened or threatening, and instead elevates those with lived experience to lead conversations about their own lives.

COLLABORATION AND EMPOWERMENT

Our core objectives are to: collaborate with refugee artists and youth workers to develop bold and informed arts practices rooted in care; provide paid work, training, and development opportunities for refugee artists and youth workers; and, to contribute best practice and share learning within the arts and refugee sectors through delivering refugee-led, informed, and creative training. This work is preventative and empowering, providing positive early intervention for new arrivals, as well as ongoing, in-depth development for those that continue working with us.

Project owner
Stella Nabukeera
Labour Councillor for Croydon
Project owner
Dawn Harrison
Co-Artistic Director
Project owner
Kate Duffy-Syedi
Co-Artistic Director
Project owner
Juliet Styles
Co-Artistic Director
Project team
Abel Atsede
Community Engagement Assistant
Project team
Ismael Mohammed
Marketing and Productions Assistant
Project team
Sara Zeus
Young Company Facilitator