Street Theatre is a fantastic way of communicating information and re-inforcing awareness, which is what Bridport TLC performers do well, having over 90 years combined experience of acting, music, workshops and street performance.

We have produced environmental commissions for Barnet Council (Giant Street Cleaners), Mayor of London ('Rubbish!' - a schools recycling show), West Dorset District Council (Green Elvis), Dorset County Council (Recycle For Dorset) and The Big Green Gathering (Gordon the Green Angel).

In Spring 2008 TLC ‘luvvies’ (Tess & Leon) took their educational show ‘Recycle For Dorset’ to 10 primary and middle schools across the county as part of D.C.C’s Waste Education Programme. The 40-minute interactive show was performed to the entire school in the morning and in the afternoons children were given the option of either making puppets from scrap or writing and performing songs on the theme of WASTE. We hope to include some of these on this site soon.

The Recycling Angel was busy spreading the word for Dorset County Council at Weymouth and Ferndown Carnivals last summer, while Green Elvis had Wychwood punters dancing to ‘The Recycle Song’ and Happy Feet’.

Arts & Schools

Tess Dickson is the founder of 'Fish-on-a-bike Creative Arts'. She has over 20 years combined experience in schools work, community projects, youth work and arts workshops, and was resident Artist at Bridport Art Centre's 'Summerthing' for 6 years. She specialises in fully interactive projects which focus on turning waste, rubbish and recyclables into beautiful and interesting things. Tess's many skills created our logo, recycled our signs and also produces our costumes and theatrical sets.

Tess has also been busy running Scrap & Junk Workshops and Sculpture Builds all over the place, the most recent being at Lyme Regis Schools’ ‘Eco-Day’ (27/2/09) and Beechcroft Primary School, Weymouth (4/03/09). Along with Helen & Jenny, Tess also ran Junk workshops at Wychwood Festival (June ’08) as ‘Wessex W.I’, a hilairious time which led them to being invited back to this lovely family festival this year. www.wychwoodfestival.com

PROMOTIONS UPDATE!

In the summer of 2007 we ran a communications project with West Dorset District Council. We launched our WRAP-funded Recycling Roadshow in sunny Lyme Regis on Saturday 21st April, helped by our Giant Seagull friends from Surreal McCoy. Our Development Worker, Rosie, co-ordinated a door-knocking team which visited thousands of homes in five parts of the district which were low participators in the kerbside collections. We also held an Activity Day in each area where the public were invited to make things from ‘junk’, learn more about recycling, and be entertained by engaging and, sometimes, quite surreal street theatre! The funding also covered five Promotional days in town centres and at The Dorset County Show. (See News Archive) .

During this campaign we sadly said goodbye to Ian Poyser who had helped us immensely in his role as District Council Recycling Officer. He has, understandably, been head-hunted by Hyder Consulting, but he knows he can come back for a cuppa anytime. Cheers Ian.

Leah recently completed the results of monitoring kerbside collections and the results show that, on average, tonnage rates increased by 7.4% in areas where we had worked, compared to 2.35% across the rest of the District. That’s a big 5% extra staying out of Landfill.

More excitingly, and very encouragingly, participation rates increased by 10% in Bridport – well done and ‘nice one’ to Skilling & Allington residents in particular!