Who gets to make culture? In Horden, we are rewriting the rules

At Ensemble ’84, we believe that culture should not be something that only happens in certain places, in certain buildings or for certain people. That is one reason we are based in Horden.

Horden is a former mining community on the Durham coast. It has a strong identity and a long history of people coming together, making things happen, and looking after their own community.

We have taken a former church and turned it into The Playhouse. It is now a professional theatre where local people can perform, train and develop their skills, and where professional theatre-makers can work alongside people from the community.

For us, this is about more than putting a theatre in Horden. It is about creating a place where people from the whole of County Durham can help shape the culture that happens here.

Our performers are local. They are given professional training and experience and are paid for their work. We work with professional artists and theatre-makers, while also drawing on the stories, history and people of the community around us.

We want people to see that professional theatre can happen here, and we want people who live here to know they can help make it happen.

Mining shaped County Durham. It shaped families, work, friendships and community life.

When the pits closed, the impact went far beyond the loss of jobs. A whole way of life changed. But the stories did not disappear. Neither did the people who had always made things happen in the community.

That is important to us because working-class communities are often talked about through the things they don't have.

We hear about deprivation and unemployment. We hear about what needs to be improved. We hear far less about the creativity that already exists in these places, or about what happens when people are given the chance to build something themselves. That is what we want to do with Ensemble ’84.

We don't want County Durham to simply be somewhere that theatre comes to. We want it to be somewhere that theatre comes from.

There is a big difference between giving someone the chance to watch theatre and giving them the chance to make it. We are doing both.

We want people to come to The Playhouse and see professional theatre. But we also want local people on the stage and behind the scenes, developing their skills and playing a real role in the work we create.

That means creating genuine opportunities for people who may not have had a traditional route into the arts. It means giving people the chance to build professional experience in their own community and to see theatre as something they can be part of, rather than something that belongs somewhere else.

Our performers should not have to leave County Durham to believe that a career in theatre is possible. And the audience should not have to leave County Durham to experience ambitious, professional theatre.

We also don't think there should be a limit on the type of theatre a working-class community can be involved in making.

Working-class communities have stories that deserve to be told, and we are proud to have created work about the history of Horden, mining and the people who have shaped this place. But we also want to make sure those stories sit alongside work from the wider theatrical canon.

We have performed Shakespeare. We have produced Brecht. We have created work based on the history of Horden. And now we are bringing Robert Tressell's The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists to The Playhouse. It feels perfect for us.

Tressell's novel looks at workers, wealth and the value created by people's labour. It asks questions about who benefits from that work and who gets to make the decisions.

There is a wider question here for culture too. Who gets to make it? Who gets paid to make it? Who gets to decide what is worth seeing? And who gets to decide where it should happen?

In recent years, there has been a lot of discussion about widening participation in the arts and creating opportunities for people from working-class backgrounds.

That work is important. But it also raises the question of where cultural investment happens in the first place.

Too often, the cultural map is centred around the same towns and cities. Theatres, arts organisations and opportunities tend to grow where cultural infrastructure already exists. Our existence is a challenge to that.

Why can't a former mining village be a place where professional theatre is made? Why can't local people be trained to work in the arts? Why can't audiences see Shakespeare, Brecht or Tressell on their doorstep? And why shouldn't the people who live here have a say in what happens?

For us, The Playhouse is an attempt to answer those questions.

It is a professional theatre in a former mining community. It is a place where local people can develop as performers, where professional artists can work, where stories from Horden can sit alongside some of the greatest plays ever written, and where audiences can come together.

This is not about bringing culture to County Durham. It is about recognising that County Durham already has its own culture and giving people the opportunity to shape what comes next.