ENACT, was an arts based intervention that paired professional writers with secondary school students to produce innovative community-led writing about young people’s experiences of sexual violence within their school communities.

The schools involved were North Oxfordshire Academy, Heyford Park School, Frank Wise School and Banbury and Bicester College, Activate Learning. Through a series of workshops led by one of Cherwell Theatre Company’s creative practitioners young people were given the tools to identify the different types of sexual violence they had experienced within their school communities and then worked with a professional writer to create a piece of new writing totally inspired by them. The young people were also given full editorial control over the work to centre them as the experts of their experiences.

Enact Vol.1 was first staged at The Mill Arts Centre, Banbury in March 2023 and consisted of four pieces.

Exploded View by Tristan Jackson-Pate

Captured by Aoife Mannix

Rumour by Lynsey Cullen

Happy, Lovely, Awesome by Karen Featherstone