Means Of Production is a UK-based Participatory Arts collective working with schools, youth and community groups, arts organisations, theatres, festivals and creative individuals of all ages.

Latest News:

Black Man Don't Float?

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MOP has teamed up with the Sameboat Project to manage an exciting theatre-for-development programme.

Black Man Don’t Float looks at the reasons why thousands of young African migrants put their lives at risk each year by setting out on desperate voyages to European territory.

The play, produced by Sameboat and managed by MOP, tells the story of the mid-ocean collision between a single-handed white yachtsman who is sailing non-stop round Africa and an economic migrant from West Africa who is trying to reach the Canaries by sea.

A studio version of the show is touring to schools and studio theatres in the UK from October 2008.

Performer Ayodele Scott said the project would allow UK audiences to communicate directly with communities in West Africa, where young men in their thousands are drowning each year as they try to reach Europe by water.

“Some calculations suggest that the death rate among the current African diaspora is even higher than during the Slave Trade, and the numbers leaving Africa look set to rise,“ he said.

“ We want people in the UK to understand why this is happening.”

More information about the show, including bookings and performance times can be found by contacting jon@means-of-production.co.uk. For more information about Sameboat. follow this link to www.sameboatproject.com

Change of venue for

Tales From the Keep

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Tales From The Keep, a heritage arts project run by Totnes Young People’s theatre with help from MOP, has been forced to abandon plans to use a local castle as a venue – because the building is too small to hold its sell-out audience.

The £35k Heritage Lottery Fund extravaganza had hoped to use Berry Pomeroy castle as the backdrop to its spectacular final shows on July 12 and 13. But organisers have been forced to abandon the spooky ruin and move the event to Dartington after English Heritage health and safety rules meant the castle could not handle the expected sell-out audience.

Tales From The Keep will now take place at Studio 1 at Dartington College of Arts on July 12 and 13.

The event will feature four plays about local history, including the mysterious Legend of the Pot of Gold, a Victorian murder melodrama set in Totnes entitled The Exquisite Corpse, and Memory of Water, a love story set against the backdrop of local raids by the 17^th century Barbary pirates, who once stole children from South Hams villages to sell them into slavery.

Top of the bill for the event will be a new play by MOP director Jon Croose The Duke, The Gypsy, and the Poor Poor Girls, which tells the story of the 19^th century Seymour family and the real lives of poor women as recorded in parish Poor Law records. The play also introduces the tale of early aviator Albert Liewentaal, aka the Birdman of Dittisham, and the story of Ruth St Maur, illegitimate daughter of Ferdinand Seymour and a gypsy kitchen maid, who grew up to become a leading Suffragette and socialist revolutionary.

Some more MOP partners:

Isca College

MOP has also been working with students at ISCA College of Media Arts in Exeter developing a script for an animated zombie flick with funding from First Light.