Community Artist

"It Can Happen Here" led by Naomi Cortes - London Bubble and Creative Partnerships

Naomi has been invited to work with various community based arts organisations on many occasions, either as a young people's theatre director or as a youth theatre tutor creating new work with local young people and inspiring them to share their stories onstage. 

Naomi is an associate artist with the Tramshed (formerly Greenwich and Lewisham Young People's Theatre) a theatre company and community arts hub based in the heart of Woolwich, South East London. Her various projects with the company have included directing their senior actors as part of the National Theatre's Connections programme, leading a series of Masterclasses for their Emerging Artists programmes, storymaking and performing, and creating new work with young people in outreach projects across the borough.

                
Naomi Cortes directing for the National Theatre's Connections Youth Theatre Festival

Naomi worked with artsdepot and has devised several productions with youth theatre members, exploring fantasy and futuristic worlds, using devised physical theatre methods. As a storymaker, she also created a series of ‘story-making’ workshops, with Early Years children encouraging self-expression and interaction with new friends inside a multi-sensory ‘garden’ full of secrets. And whilst performing on stage in Roald Dahl’s The Twits, Naomi led as ‘chief Mugglewump in residence’ on the production’s education programme working with over five hundred children from schools across the borough of Barnet, culminating with their own ‘upside down circus’!

                                         

Naomi’s work with Half Moon Young People's Theatre included developing outreach programmes for Early Years children and being a prominent artist in Sure Start, a programme targeted at parents and children under the age of four living in the most disadvantaged areas. She also directed new work with several of the company’s inclusive youth theatres, encouraging individual expression and confidence within a creative group setting. Exploring physical theatre, improvisation and script writing, each group discovered new methods of stagecraft, creating their own theatrical responses to the venue’s season of work and beyond.

“Naomi worked for London Bubble on a project entitled ‘It Can Happen Here’ which involved her delivering drama workshops with young people in a wide variety of settings including Primary, Secondary and a PMLD school. The feedback from children, teachers and fellow practitioners alike was resoundingly positive. Naomi displays a passion for working with young people. Naomi is reliable, committed and has an amazing creative energy, which captures the participants’ imagination and enables them to explore different themes or ideas.”
Sonia Hyams, Associate Director, London Bubble Theatre Company