A 2025 recap - collaboration at the heart of what we do

Quarter one: Joy, Exploration and Development

We started 2025 by launching Joy Club, bringing 10 participants together to explore creativity, comfort, connection, spontaneity and more through 8 dedicated sessions exploring the idea of Joy, made by our creative producer Justin Teddy Cliffe with expert project partners Frank Thomas, Charlotte Lewis and Beyer Psychology Services.

In February Artist Julia Thomas worked with The Wallich and people who had experienced homelessness, creating an audio tour of Cardiff’s famous Queen street - exploring the city's hub through a different lens, merging reality, memory and fantasy to create a unique guide to the heart of the city.

March saw our Young Collective reach the culmination of a year of development and opportunity. They created and shared an original piece of theatre - The Last Flower - with public audiences and artistic peers. An important moment for these developing artists in finding their voices and creating something from start to finish. With huge thanks to Porter’s for allowing this to be one of the first productions in their exciting new theatre space.

Quarter two: Celebration, partnership & community

We began quarter two celebrating the 2024-2025 year long season of work, collaborating with local artists to engage communities around Cardiff. The end of season ‘TEAM Celebrate’ event saw a debut public performance from Harvey, a young musician who had worked with us on a music and documentary-making project at Ocean Park Academy in Splott, artist Ibby Abdi and community leader Nirushan Sudarsan premiered a film created with the young people of Grangetown, and an exhibition celebrating and presenting all of the initiatives from the season, showcasing the work of over 50 creatives.

In the spring, we partnered with Counterpoints Arts and a host of local creatives to create a conversation around the relationship of mental health, art and the refugee experience. Bringing over 50 local creatives together to share, learn and immerse in discussion, working with industry leaders in the arts and mental health sectors, we also enjoyed a very special performance from Oasis’ One World Choir.

We continued our collaboration with Counterpoints as part of Refugee week, and were proud to share a free screening event of films sharing the refugee experience at Porters Cardiff, welcoming communities from around Cardiff to experience powerful work purposefully selected for the nationwide festival.

Quarter three: Edinburgh, Immersion and scratch performances

As summer was in full swing we supported brilliant Welsh talent on a larger scale, as we produced Leila Navabi’s new show ‘Relay, showing at Sherman Theatre in Cardiff, Theatre503 in London and at The Pleasance Courtyard in Edinburgh as part of Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The show had been initially developed as part of our 2024 The City Socials cohort. As part of this project, we were also able to offer a young artist the opportunity to shadow Leila as part of their own development, and two further young artists were given the opportunity to experience Edinburgh festival for the first time, joining a cohort of other brilliant Welsh artists in curated experiences from Arts Council Wales and the British Council.

With the start of the new school year, we worked with Danny Muir, Duncan Hallis and an amazing team of creatives to present a unique and inventive Immersive Schools Production, a week-long in-world theatre performance that allowed students to develop STEAM skills, learn and be a part of creating theatre as they worked with in-character artists to solve a magical mystery brought to them within their own classrooms and day-to-day school life.

In the autumn, we commissioned three new artists to present in-development work as part of our new The City Socials cohort. They presented their work to a live audience of peers in a relaxed environment at The Canopi in Cardiff. Rachel Greer performed a dance piece all about connection, and Ashley McAvoy & Tracy Harris presented a near-future Cardiff through spoken word, live music, and audiovisual projection. The event also saw a chance for conversation, as artists Danny Muir and Duncan Hallis discussed the power of immersive theatre.

Quarter four: Young people, artist development and new work

Developing The City Socials initiative to reach more creatives, in October we presented a day workshops focussed on artist development and idea sharing for the theatre-maker community, with industry professionals including Allie John (Yellobrick) Sarah Valentin & Julia Harris (The Sustainable Studios) and Sarah Sirati (Ardour Academy.)

On bonfire night we celebrated the development of work by The City Socials 2024 cohort artist Kyle Legall, hosting a live music event sharing original tracks and spoken word from his theatre piece ‘Somewhere Over the Bay Bro.’ As part of the project we were able to support him create music recordings of these original tracks.

As the year came to a close our collective of young local creatives engaged with the young community of Riverside over the course of multiple events, engaging them through photography, making and performance. Through this, the young people became a core part of developing an end of year show at Riverside Warehouse.

The end of year show, ‘Plu & The Dream Tree’ became a story of resilience and love inspired by the young people in Riverside that we had worked with, discussing the power of friendship and teamwork shown through the dream world of our protagonist. The work was presented to the community and the wider public in December rounding up a year of change, development and community for TEAM.

The best of the rest…

2025 wasn’t just about public work, it was also a time of evolution, learning and collaboration

We started the new year as a new company TEAM Collective Cymru - new ideals, new identity, and new approaches.

We celebrated - During the year we were proud to be announced as finalists for the Stephen Abott award finalist for innovation in theatre, and as a Cardiff Life Awards finalist in the arts category.

We welcomed new faces - welcoming 4 new board members to guide us in our new mission, including a new Director of the TEAM board, Cat Mckeag.

We connected with others - Our Creative Producer, Justin was invited to Japan to build global partnerships, we attended IETM events in Berlin and Bradford, Justin joined our Director of Collaboration, Naomi to present the work of TEAM at Unearthed Festival in West Wales, and Naomi recently spent a day with Fran Wen’s Young Associate artists in Bangor to discuss our work and our journey over the past year.

We developed our knowledge - Key highlights, included access in the arts training from Sara Beer at Craidd, Board training with Michelle Cawardine Palmer of Theatres Trust and a new partnership with Arts&Business with grateful thanks to ACW for making this partnership possible.