Turtle Key link up!

Had an excellent meeting yesterday evening with Tina and Allie from Turtle Key Arts, who look after a number of exciting London based companies like Ockham's Razor and Amici. Allie's really supportive of Drama St Mary's students going on placement with these companies working as ASM's, sitting in on rehearsals, supporting techs etc. which offers us a great opportunity to provide students with a genuine in road to professional experience. We've got close to 300 students in the department now and although we're completely geared up to teach great classes and deliver exciting modules, increasingly the emphasis needs to be on how you translate the learning into experience and eventually employment. Partnerships like this really help.

Allie also talked through some of our plans for the Strawberry Hill House show scheduled for Winter 2010. She didn't feel it was really an Arts Council project, but might work well as a local consortium, providing we can gain some support from Richmond Council and even The Orange Tree and Richmond Theatre. The other key player might be the V & A, who are hosting a Walpole exhibition to celebrate the re-opening of the house and maybe (even further afield) Yale University, where the Walpole archive is currently situated? Time to get on the phones and talk.

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