A groundbreaking production company has just announced another groundbreaking arts project

Maya Productions has announced a brand new show that was developed through a participatory creative project with residents at South Yorkshire Housing Association (SYHA) Schemes living in severe mental distress and who are supported through the NHS Care Programme Approach.

Dynamic Flights

Directed by Maya Productions’ Artistic Director Suzanne Gorman, Dynamic Flights is an uplifting, funny, and heartwarming story about friendship and self-discovery that reminds us that no matter who we are, we all need kindness, understanding and access to nature.

Maya Productions is a global majority led company that for 30 years has been making diverse theatre to create change. It brings together organisations and individuals who passionately want their work to enable social  change and racial justice. Maya Productions create opportunities for people of all ages, abilities, cultures, and classes to experience theatre.

It makes work led by South Asian, African, Latin American Diaspora, and other Global Majority Background artists, involve young people and underrepresented communities in creative activities and promote workforce inclusion across the arts. 

The first phases of the Dynamic Flights project were funded by the Baring Foundation. Their research, Creatively Minded, highlighted “few diverse-led organisations were specifically devoted to arts and health work and that ethnically diverse people were not well represented, either as service users or within the workforce of the arts and health organisations”.

A key aim of this project for Maya Productions is to develop the skills and career progression of Black, South Asian, East Asian, and global majority arts practitioners, to work in the arts and mental health sector.

Representing the Global Majority

90% of the entire Dynamic Fights team is from a Global Majority background including Rotherham writer Tair Rafiq who shared:

Working on the Dynamic Flights project has been a tremendous boost to my confidence as a working class Global Majority artist. After years of hard work and struggle, at last I feel seen and heard, and a door has been opened for me.

Over two years, Maya Productions worked with residents at SYHA managed homes, The Lister Project and The Beaufort Project. Artists delivered over 60 creative sessions for residents involving a range of different artforms, with the eventual goal of working towards the new piece of theatre. During sessions, participants and creatives discussed and created themes, characters, locations, set design ideas, script readings and music for the show.

Dynamic Flights will be performed in March and April at several South Yorkshire Housing Association managed homes for residents and at a Sheffield Hallam Performance Lab for university students.

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