Stella Barnes

My Story

Freelance Consultant, Facilitator and Participatory Artist

I have worked extensively in participatory arts, arts and education and arts and social justice and I have a special interest in arts and migration, disabled arts and youth leadership.

I come from a long line of teachers. I was raised by parents who were radical educators. My mother trained with the exceptional drama-in-education pioneer and radical educator Dorothy Heathcote my father was a guest lecturer on her Postgraduate Diploma in Drama in Education at Newcastle University. As a child, I experienced Dorothy Heathcote’s ‘in-role drama’ before I experienced acting. When I was at Bretton Hall College, studying for my degree in Drama, I wrote my dissertation about Dorothy Heathcote’s teacher in role , and my aim was to work in Theatre in Education.

In the 1990s my hope of working in Theatre in Education was realised and I joined GYPT (Greenwich and Lewisham Young People’s Theatre) part of the wider Theatre in Education movement, pioneered in the second half of the 20^th century by companies such as Coventry’s Belgrade Theatre, Rochdale’s M6 Theatre Company, Big Brum in the Midlands and GYPT.

GYPT toured theatre to schools, with a simple set in the back of van. Performances were devised by a team of Actor Teachers, a director, and a resident writer. It was a unique brand of participatory theatre, a hybrid of Heathcote’s drama in education methodology and Augusto Boal’s Forum Theatre.

I left GYPT to join Ovalhouse (now Brixton house), where I led the participation Department for 13 years. My work was particularly focused on working with children and young people experiencing social justice issues and structural barriers to arts participation and I set up a long-term project with young refugees.

Alongside a team of passionate practitioners, I established a youth leadership programme, founded on ethical values. Young leaders devised their own ethical manifesto and I committed to holding myself accountable to them.

In 2019 I became Creative Director of Community Arts North West, a well-established arts charity in Manchester, where I worked with a team to develop and deliver an innovative socially engaged arts programme, with a special focus on arts and migration.

I continue to apply my extensive creative facilitation and leadership experience and skills to a wide range of projects and contexts; supporting organisations and creative teams to engage in new thinking, project development, relationship building and strategy development.