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Clean Break
Clean Break was founded by two women in prison who believed in the power of theatre to transform lives.
Grant type: Criminal Justice
Grant amount: £150,000
Clean Break was founded in 1979 by two women in prison who believed in the power of theatre to transform lives. They use theatre to keep the subject of women in prison on the cultural radar and to help reveal the damage caused by the criminal justice system.
They provide theatre-based workshops for women either already caught in the criminal justice system, or at risk of entering it. They deliver gender-specific, trauma-informed spaces that aim to build women’s confidence, resilience, aspirations, and skills.
In January 2019 City Bridge Foundation awarded Clean Break £150,000 to fund the salary of a Head of Participation in their Member Support Program, funding that was renewed in 2022 for a further two years. The role oversees Clean Break’s participation work: including their member’s programme, which reaches seventy women each year through theatre-based workshops, holistic support and outreach workshops in women’s centres, prisons and in the community. Clean Break is the only women’s theatre company of its kind.
A lot of traditional support is single-issue and involves women going to lots of different providers and often having to relive very traumatic experiences or try to solve issues in isolation that actually intersect with each other … So what we do is start with the person and try and deal with all issues holistically at the same time.Member of staff
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