Our Story
Original ideas. Imaginative spaces. Brave stories.
Bounce started around a kitchen table in 2006. From the beginning, we’ve focused on making original work - rooted in place and shaped by collaboration between artists and participants.
We’re interested in what happens when professional practice meets lived experience. That’s led us to make work in theatres - but also in schools, libraries, housing estates, cafés, hospitals, and outdoor spaces. Wherever we’re working, we aim to strike a fine balance: keeping our process open and responsive, while holding ourselves to a high standard of craft and performance.
How We Work
Collaborative Artmaking Rooted in People and Place
We create original performance and visual art through a collaborative process.
Our work often starts by listening to a place, a group, a story, or a moment. From there, we develop ideas through conversation, devising, research, play, and design.
We don’t separate participation from performance. The making process is part of the work. Co-creation isn’t a tagline for us - it’s a working method that produces complex, layered, and carefully crafted outcomes.
We care about form. We care about detail. And we care about building space where everyone is actively involved in shaping the work.
The Early Years
A Testing Ground
Our early work was fast, adaptive, and practical.
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Dramatic Edge brought devised theatre into schools, testing how far we could push live performance in everyday classroom settings.
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In Hounslow, we partnered with the Extended Schools team to build creative environments in school halls where children created original stories.
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Butterfly Stories, performed in a hospice garden, was a sensory show created with and for children with profound disabilities - celebrating their unique ways of connecting with the world.
These projects set the tone for everything that followed: listen carefully, design for context, and treat every project as an opportunity to grow artistically.
Developing Our Voice
Community Projects & Productions
As Bounce evolved, so did the scale and ambition of our work.
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Tiny Tales from Around the World was a multigenerational performance developed with people aged 7 to 70.
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Inside My Imagination, created for the Paralympic Cultural Festival, pushed our sensory storytelling further - shaped by how children with complex disabilities experience creativity.
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Hounslow Youth Theatre grew from an empty building into a weekly space where young people led their own creative development - from curating festivals to staging performances.
At every stage, we’ve held onto two key things:
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Rigorous creative direction.
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A genuine openness to other people’s ideas.
That balance is what gives our work its shape. We follow what emerges in the room while keeping a clear sense of design, dramaturgy, and artistic intent.
Bigger Themes, Bolder Work
Art That Dares to Ask Bigger Questions
In the years that followed, we took on more complex subjects and settings:
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Urban Art Stories explored street art through the eyes of young curators, culminating in a show at Saatchi Gallery.
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Emoji, made with Anstee Bridge students, combined folklore, technology, and teenage experience into a surreal performance - paired with a public installation in a local library.
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Fried Chicken - Made with Anstee Bridge, professionally performed at the Arthur Cotterell Theatre, and Richmond Safeguarding Conference.
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SCAR grew from conversations with young people in alternative education. The resulting show toured to The National Archives, Rose Theatre, safeguarding conferences, Kingston Hospital, and Heatham House.
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Loneliness in the City was a visual arts exhibition at Saatchi Gallery, exploring what it means to feel disconnected in a busy place.
Each of these projects blended process and performance — creating space for collaboration while holding a clear artistic line.
Adapting in a Crisis
Pandemic Work
When the pandemic hit, we shifted how we worked — but not what we value.
We moved online. We sent out weekly creative zines to families. And we made Dear Children, a 10-minute doorstep Christmas show performed to over 300 households. Each performance included a personal message from parents to their children - a small moment of live connection at a time when connection was hard to find.
Back in the Room
From Café Corners to Theatre Stages: Art in Everyday Places
Since returning to in-person work, we’ve continued to stretch our practice:
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Turn Up Join In began as a social prescribing pilot in a café. It’s now a regular space where people come together to share stories and make visual art.
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Sugar & Spice was a youth theatre piece exploring how a family navigates change - from the end of WWII to the aftermath of the pandemic.
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Threads, performed at the Omnibus Theatre, explored young people’s relationship to the textile industry and the mental health impact of fashion.
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Into the Forest, created with children in Earlsfield, was a devised performance that transformed a café into a forest, with an accompanying visual art installation.
The Bigger Picture
Built Upon Years of Showing Up When It Mattered
The projects listed here are just some of our major works.
Behind each one are years of quieter, less visible work - the thousands of workshops, rehearsals, devising sessions, one-off projects, and after-school experiments we’ve delivered with children and young people since we began.
Not everything fits on a webpage, but we’ve learnt from all of it. Every project, no matter the size, has shaped how we work and strengthened us as an artistic team. It’s that long-term, consistent practice - in classrooms, youth centres, theatres, and public spaces, that underpins everything we do today.
What's Next
From Café Corners to Theatre Stages: Art in Everyday Places
We’re interested in depth, detail, and doing things well. Whether it’s a one-night pop-up or a touring production, we want the work to stand up - as art, not just activity.
To "Bounce" is to move, to shift direction, to adapt, and to end up seeing the world differently.
The best way to understand what we do? Join in.
