This year’s been like no other for everyone, but it’s been brilliant to see how audiences and arts organisations across the UK and the world have found new creative outlets and ways to connect with each other. Our supporters have been amazing, giving us encouragement, enthusiasm, ideas and feedback as well as financial donations, all of which has made a great difference to us and kept us feeling confident about our work and our message. So a huge thank you to all of you.

This year of all years we want to celebrate our supporters, achievements, staff, young people, freelancers and partners more than ever – because producing work during the last 8 months wouldn’t have been possible without everyone working together.

Starting before the pandemic, we’d like to celebrate the wonderful Nick Moss and Dave Harper, consultants on our show about end of life, Dead Good, who died within a week of each other in July. Rachael, our Artistic Director, misses her friends deeply.

We want to celebrate the creative and admin team involved in How Hard is Waving?, the BBC Culture in Quarantine commission we never thought we would get, and our success in producing 20 episodes in 8 weeks – as well as our wonderful social media supporters who kept us going!

Celebration is in order for our moving home in the summer - to The Swan Theatre in Worcester. Thank you to the whole team there, who have been welcoming and wonderful…we even have hot water!

The Wednesday Wave, our campaign to combat loneliness, especially amongst care home residents, began with one person waving to a care home resident, and spread nationwide to involve thousands of wavers. Recent feedback from Radio Leyland and others showed that many would carry on waving into the New Year…

And we definitely want to celebrate and shout (and sing and dance) about Joy in a Box, our ‘advent calendar’ for care homes to say thank you to staff  - and let residents know they are not forgotten. Each box is full of activities and games, music playlists, giant balloons, elastics and scarves, plus digital access to some of our performances and we’ve sent it to fifty care homes, hospices and day centres this Christmas - all for free – with generous support from our funders and audience members. How great is that?

And to finish, let’s look forward to a better year for everyone in 2021. We’re extremely excited about our new production, Love Through Double Glazing. Made during lockdown for care homes, day centres and settings where residents have been isolated, pilot shows so far have been nothing short of riotous - wonderful, limitless fun unleashed and residents laughing til they ached. If all goes to plan, there will be a full tour of the show from May 2021.

If that’s not something to look forward to, we don’t know what is!

Have a wonderful Christmas and New Year, and here’s to a 2021 full of theatre, music, dancing, joy and fun – something we’re all in need of.