Re:sound

BBC Concert Orchestra, world-renowned choir The Sixteen and award-winning theatre company 1927 join Streetwise Opera for an uplifting performance featuring stories about our cities co-created by people with lived experience of homelessness.

We’ll meet water spirits and magical bees from Manchester; we’ll travel to a future where robots have replaced humans, and where culture (from a cup of mushy peas to the genius of the Kanneh-Mason family) is preserved in the Museum of Nottingham Life; and things will definitely heat up when environmental protesters surround a double-decker bus in London!

This event is part of Re:sound, a year-long festival that encourages artists and audiences to rediscover the cities they live in, through the eyes – and voices – of people who have been homeless.

Fearless micro-operas

Participants in Streetwise Opera’s workshops will share nine micro-operas that have been co-created by people with lived experience of homelessness working with world-class composers in London, Manchester and Nottingham.

The Re:sound micro-operas are imbued with fearlessness – the courage it takes to claim back your voice and your identity after experiencing trauma, the determination to explore and celebrate the spirit of a city that made you feel unwelcome, and the certainty that the voices of those who have been homeless deserve to be listened to.

Yet, there is lots of humour in these pieces, and a willingness to explore themes that make us feel proud of the cities we live in.

Performances will be on Monday 20 March for an audience of over 1,200 school children at Bridgewater Hall in Manchester; Tuesday 22 at Nottingham Playhouse; Wednesday 23 in the Blue Room at Southbank Centre; and on Sunday 26 March, with over 100 people with lived experience of homelessness from London, Manchester and Nottingham, at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London.

These striking performances feature an animated backdrop produced by 1927, a multi-award-winning theatre company that specialises in combining performance and live music with animation and film to create large-scale productions. The artwork for this backdrop was created during a series of workshops with Streetwise Opera participants led by visual artist Amber Cooper-Davies.

Re:sound has been possible thanks to generous funding from Arts Council England, The National Lottery Heritage Fund, other trusts and foundations, and individual funders.

The performance on Sunday 26 March at Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall was generously funded by Cockayne Grants for the Arts through The London Community Foundation.