Mission, Vision and Values
Mission
To create work which delights and inspires the people on stage, and in doing so, delight and inspire the audience.
Vision
To be an empowered collective of co-independent artists and associate artists, who are:
- Paid fairly for their time and efforts
- Open to collaboration
- Committed to their continuous professional development
- Sensitive to one another’s needs, health and well-being
- Leaders for positive social and creative change in the theatre community of Bristol, the UK and beyond.
Values
Openness: To working with new people, learning new ideas, exploring challenging and nuanced concepts, to treading the ‘path less travelled by’
Courage: Daring to be vulnerable; to be silly; to take risks and have difficult conversations
Respect: Cultivating a sense of respect for each other, ourselves, the work we create and our audiences.
Fun and Playfulness: Aiming to create work which delights and inspires one another, and our audiences.
Happy Fail: To know and understand that we will mess up, and that these mistakes are opportunities for growth and understanding, about each other and the world.- Paid fairly for their time and efforts
The Story
The story of The Delight Collective
Emerging from Improvisation
The Delight Collective is the brain child of Cumbrian turn Bristolian Imogen (Imo) Palmer (she/they).
After years of performing with improvisation companies (including Degrees of Error, Impro Melbourne and Soothplayers), in 2017 Imo started to explore how elements of improvisation could be used to tell queer stories, and devise, write and perform scripted and interactive theatre.
Improvisation and theatre legend Keith Johnstone is quoted as saying:
'The greatest ability of the improviser is the ability to delight and inspire their scene partner.'
This inspired the theatre company's vision to explore delight and a source of creativity and as an antidote or alternative to pessimism, self-deprecation and insecurity during bleak global and local crisis.
Making theatre
Imo draws from their background hosting stand-up nights, training in acting, clowning, Commedia dell-arte and script writing to initiate collaborations with a variety of practitioners to create different projects.
Each project is inspired by what is delighting the participants and how this may delight and inspire the audiences they reach.
Milestones include a year-long residency of improvised game show ‘The Bish Bosh Bash’ at Bristol Improv Theatre (2019 -20), garnering 5 star reviews for interactive feminist clown show ‘IMOGENÉ: the improvised pop concert’ at Vault Festival (Feb 2020) and interactive queer, apocalyptic musical Help! We’re Still Alive being produced by Grey Area Theatre in 2022. Find out more about projects and collaborators on the Home page.
Applying theare
Throughout the company’s journey, they’ve found opportunities to explore how theatre and storytelling can be used to provoke and inspire positive social change. During the years of lockdown in the UK, Imo developed a series of hugely popular workshops and courses using tools from improvisation and acting to support women* to explore their relationship with the term ‘Being Difficult.’
This led to successful Bristol City Council Originator’s grant to collaborate with black women’s Playback Theatre Company ‘Breathing Fire’ on a series of workshops for local groups of women, including women’s charities, refugees and migrants.
Imo paused theatre-making to complete a masters degree in Dramatherapy (2022-24) to develop their creative, reflective and academic writing and deepen their understanding of how theatre, stories and improvisation can be used as a force for healing and positive social change. As of October 2024, they are a fully qualified dramatherapist.
*we use the inclusive definition of women which includes cis and trans women, as well as non-binary people who are comfortable in a space which centres the experience of women.
