• What’s On
  • Your Visit
  • Schools
  • Take Part
  • Support Us
  • More +
Access Tools

Artists and Industry

Access

About Polka

  • History
  • International
  • Blog & News

Jobs/Volunteering

Community

Artists and Industry

Hire Us

Café

Gift Vouchers

  • What’s On
  • Your Visit
    • Your Visit
    • Your Visit
  • Schools
    • Schools
    • Mental Health & Wellbeing
    • Schools
    • Workshops
    • Trips
    • Funded Schemes
      • Funded Schemes
      • Freefalling
      • Curtain Up!
      • Arts Award
      • Write Here Write Now
    • Teacher Hub
    • Sensory Space
    • After School Clubs
    • Work Experience
    • Arts Award
  • Take Part
    • Take Part
    • Take Part
    • Weekly Classes
    • Drop in Sessions
    • Holiday Workshops & Summer Schools
    • Young & Younger Voices
    • Saturday Club
    • Polka Invites
  • Support Us
    • Support Us
    • Support Us
    • Memberships
    • Leave a Legacy
    • Our Supporters
  • More
    • More
    • Access
    • About Polka
      • History
      • International
      • Blog & News
    • Jobs/Volunteering
    • Community
    • Artists and Industry
    • Hire Us
    • Café
    • Gift Vouchers
  • Follow us
Actress with umbrella and microphone standing on a stage

New Ideas

We are always seeking new partnerships. If you are an artist with an idea for an innovative show for children, or a company making exceptional work for young audiences, we’d love to hear from you.

We value diversity in our artistic programme and encourage contact from artists of all backgrounds.

Please email our Senior Producer, Helen Matravers to start a conversation.

Contact

PolkaLAB

PolkaLAB is our in-house professional development for companies or artists wanting to create innovative and ground-breaking children’s theatre.

This 18-month residency supports up to three companies or artists wanting to research and develop new productions for children.

Current PolkaLAB artists:

Young woman with curly brown hair smiling

Nikki Charlesworth, Puppeteer

What Happened to You – opening at festivals Summer 2021. 

What Happened to You?  follows three raggedy puppets, who, like their puppeteers, are just trying to get through the day. Ahead of them lies a mountain of challenges and they are forced to find creative ways to overcome their impassable surroundings. 

This show explores our preconceptions about disability in a playful and humorous way, that is enjoyable for the whole family.

Woman with dark hair staring straight forward

Suba Subramaniam, Artistic Director Akademi

Plastics – now in co-production with Polka Theatre and Akademi Dance 

Plastics – Drastic & Fantastic - created for children 7+ exploring our relationship with plastic – covering its harmful environmental impact yet exploring what makes plastic so versatile, useful and ubiquitous. Akademi will utilise their rich heritage of South Asian dance incorporating gestures, contemporary choreography and non-linear narratives. The making of the show will be in collaboration with schools, Access experts, scientists, tech and designers to create a unique, accessible and relevant performance with a bold aesthetic.

Two Tonne's Logo

Two Tonne 

The company are seeking to create a new work for children aged 3 to 5 and their families – a collaboration between 3 lead artists Pauline Mayers, Testament and Iain Bloomfield

The piece will be a beatbox/ hip hop musical designed for small-scale black box studios and non-traditional spaces. The piece will combine text and movement, performance, music, rap and a spirit of play to create a warm, thoughtful and immersive piece that explores similarity and difference in the context of racism and multi-cultural Britain. It will be a piece that does not seek to preach or teach, but celebrates our young audiences’ ability to see, negotiate and embrace perceived difference.

Previous PolkaLAB artists include:

Jack Benjamin, Anna Newell  and Rosie Heafford with her company Second Hand Dance

CO-PRODUCERS

We frequently work with other companies, venues and producers to create new work. This enables us to continually challenge ourselves, the way we work and the sort of work we are making but also allows us to share our knowledge of making work for our specific age range. 

Please email Helen Matravers to start a conversation.

In the past, we have produced work with:

 

BBC Worldwide: Charlie & Lola Best Bestest Play 

Little Angel Theatre: The Paper Doll

Oxford Playhouse: How to Hide a Lion

Royal Opera House: Dot, Squiggle & Rest and Hatch 

Theatr Clwyd: To Dream Again

 

 

 

We are currently working on new shows with: 

One-Tenth Human 

Royal & Derngate  

Brunskill & Grimes

Contact us

The final show in our Adventure Theatre prior to closing for redevelopment was a co-production with Apples and Snakes , In The Winter Wood 

During closure for our redevelopment, we co-produced  I’ll Take you to Mrs Cole  with internationally renowned theatre company Complicité 

RESEARCH

Many of our productions aim to portray and enhance how Polka reflects current child development research. Over the years we have worked with a number of academics. During our Festival of Childhood (Brainwaves 2016, Techtopia 2018) we stepped outside of our usual output to reach a wider audience and explored issues and themes that reflected on contemporary childhood, underpinned by expertise from outside of our usual circles. 

 

Previous Academics and their work have included:

Roma Patel

Her recent PhD research at the University of Nottingham focused on the points of intersection between scenography and interactive technologies in Theatre for Early Years. She is interested in how current electronic and wearable tech can be developed for performative installation.

She presented The Enchanted Forest at our Techtopia Festival allowing Early Years audiences to walk around an interactive forest.

Dr Tim Smith, Dr Rachael Bedford and their team at Birkbeck University

They presented elements of their TABLET investigation at our Techtopia Festival. Family ownership of touchscreens increasing from 7% in 2011 to 71% in 2014 (OfCom, 2014). This is a huge change in a child’s early media environment and as Developmental Scientists they wondered how early exposure to such devices might influence the way our children are developing. There was very little scientific research investigating this topic. This project is the first attempt to fill this gap.

In the Leverhulme and Wellcome Trust-funded TABLET (Toddler Attentional Behaviours and Learning with Touchscreens) project they studied how 6 month to 3 year old infants used touchscreen devices and how this use (or lack of use) influenced their cognitive, brain and social development.

Professor Ian Goodyear, University of Cambridge

He worked with Company Scarabeus to create a new aerial show –  Depths of my Mind – which took a journey into the teenage brain.

The show was inspired by the U-Change study led by scientists in the Neuroscience in Psychiatry Network at Cambridge University and University College London.

Caspar Addyman, Sinead Rocha and Rosy Edey with Birkbeck University’s BabyLAB

They joined the creative team on our Brainwaves Festival flagship show Shake Rattle and Roll to present, by way of an Early Year’s piece of theatre directed by Sarah Argent, their research on how infants categorise objects, why they laugh, their timing and rhythmic abilities and how they recognise emotion from movement.

ACCESS

We are committed to removing barriers to anyone with access needs. Most areas of our building are accessible, including our rehearsal room, meeting rooms and stage.

We have an accessible dressing room and an accessible toilet backstage. Both our stages are accessible via level access and a lift. 

We are continuing to work on improving our access across the building wherever possible and will always do our best to accommodate anyone who works with us. If you can’t find what you need, please ask.

To find out more, visit our Access Page.

Polka Theatre, 240 The Broadway, Wimbledon, London SW19 1SB

Box office 020 8543 4888

[email protected]

Useful Links

  • About Polka
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Jobs/Volunteering
  • Hire Us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Cookie Policy
  • Child Protection Policy
  • @polkatheatre
Sign up Donate Now

Be the first to hear

about Polka's monthly news & competitions - for free!

Let us know if you have a particular interest in:

© Polka Theatre 2004 - 2023 | Polka is a registered charity no. 256979