Have your Say, Folkestone! Legislative Theatre Project Reflection Document

On 18 October 2025, FPAC facilitated a Legislative Theatre project as part of the Folkestone Fringe Festival. Starting at 11am, six participants gathered at the Sunflower House in Folkestone to begin the process of creating a piece of ‘Legislative Theatre.’  After a series of name games & warm-ups, we broke into pairs to discuss the prompt of ‘Based on your lived experiences, what is one issue that addresses local policy challenges?’

Jane Darling, Folkestone & Hythe Town Councillor, Cheriton East Ward acting in FPAC's Legislative Theatre Project.

THE ISSUES:

From this prompt, three themes came out of the group:

1. The pressures [and costs] of students taking the 11+ exams and the unfair advantages that extra tutoring may skew the results.

2. The consequences of closing one bus station before the new one is open and the poor provision provided to commuters in this between period.

3. The lack of social housing and the difficulty in accessing advise & guidance on accessing affordable housing.

   
   

A Legislative Theatre Play on the lack of provision around the new Folkestone Bus Station.

THE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS:

In these three groups, they then developed a ‘still image’ of the critical moment of each event. The other groups observed these created ‘still images’ and observed the physical quality and similarities in each image and were asked to determine ‘who has the power?’ in each image. After feeding back on all three images, they were asked to create two more images of ‘the moment before’ and ‘the moment after’ which, when put together, creates a sequence of still images of the beginning, middle & end of a story.  After showing these three images, they are asked to improvise lines to connect the images.  It is important, as the images become a play, that the story-teller does not play themselves in it.

We rehearse it and show it to the other participants.  After each performance, we ask ‘Is this realistic? Have you experienced something similar?  Can you add to the dialogue to make it more realistic?  Through this process, the story becomes universal to the group and not just the story-teller’s story.   

This is the process of creating short pieces of Legislative Theatre based on the participants lived experience of challenges they have faced.

THE PERFORMANCE:

They then performed these pieces in front of audiences who have the power to make systemic changes to these challenges.  In our audience, we were fortunate to have four local councillors along with a town councillor who participated.  We ask those in the audience to try to change the outcome of the play or to suggest means of changing the outcome.  This prompt produced three commitments from the councillors in the audience:

Cllrs. Mike Blakemore, Polly Blakemore and Anita Jones in the audience suggesting more positive systemic changes to the difficulties presented on the stage.

THE COMMITMENTS:

Regarding the lack of shelter at the temporary bus stops, one councillor suggested to review the information in newsletters to make sure the community knows exactly when new shelters will be in situ and one agreed to update the information in a more public manner [eg display boards at the temporary bus stations with completion dates of each stage].  Another councillor committed to educating themselves about the processes around eviction and housing and to speak with the councillor charged with the housing portfolio to inform them of the play’s content.

In this taster project, we knew going in that we were interested in achieving ‘baby steps’ towards systemic change:  No councillor could build a bus shelter or find housing for our homeless character but the baby steps of educating oneself and making the public more aware [and not relying on the internet to disseminate all the information] are very doable.  And this is the first point of LT - the change has to be doable and accountable.

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Audience Feedback:

‘As a councillor, I felt it was a valuable experience and the session had some positive outcomes’

‘[LT lets us] step back and view issues as experienced by residents and consider different ways of doing things.’

‘I think it can hold councillors and other policy makers to account and make them think about the pathways they use to communicate and to 'help' service users.’ 

Participant Feedback:

‘A great way of getting issues in front of councillors and making them think about those issues they weren't aware of.’

‘It can hold councillors and other policy makers to account and make them think about the pathways they use to communicate.’

’`An excellent way of approaching issues that really affect people's lives but which are consistently ignored and never resolved.’

‘[LT lets us] stand in the shoes of other people.'

For more information about this project and future Legislative Theatre events, please contact Matthew Hahn, Artistic Director of The Folkestone Performing Arts Company, at folkestonepac@gmail.com or on 07897 084998.

For more pictures of the event, please visit here.

All Photos © Mark Hourahane 2025.