A LIGHT IN A DARK PLACE - Site Specific Performance at the Bear Church

Building on themes of community, rescue, light and darkness, nature as respite, resilience, love and compassion, dancers fill the Bear

Church, currently empty and in its final stages of construction, we find echoes of the past while embracing the Bear’s message of hope for the future.

The performance is inspired by stories of ‘The Deptford Ragged School’ founded in 1844, twenty-seven years before the State began providing education for all children. As many children as possible were crammed into the rented room to learn how to read and write, and very often to be fed too. It was one of the first twenty ragged schools exclusively run for ‘ragged children’, so called because they were ‘dressed in rags’ with bare feet in all weathers.

The Bear Church in Deptford seeks to build on, and extend, the legacy of creating community and addressing the impact of poverty on people’s lives.

Educating…