National Theatre Wales receives major Gulbenkian performance grant

National Theatre Wales is the recipient of a major grant from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation for the creation of a new, high-quality and spectacular production which will be led by four young Somali artists from the Butetown area of Cardiff.

Worth £175,000 over two years, the grant will support the development of an innovative performance piece in which leading professionals collaborate with disadvantaged communities. It has been devised by the Foundation to encourage arts organisations to create new productions which genuinely involve local people, while remaining adamant about uncompromisingly high artistic standards, and which have international impact .

Ahmed Hassan, Ali Goolyad, Daud Farah and Bashir Deria came to NTW with their idea for De Gabay - the song of their lives as young British-born Somali men. Eager to change perceptions of Somalis, a community often linked to world-wide news images of piracy, civil war and violence, they were inspired by their involvement in National Theatre Wales' Butetown production, The Soul Exchange. The new show will be devised over two years with organisations including Heeso Cymru, and will draw on the Somalis' own music and poetry and be developed with the leading Belgian-Moroccan theatre-maker Ben Benaouisse. Combining the music of key Somali musicians such as the Toronto based Hassan Aden with Welsh talent, it will culminate in a series of installations and site-specific performances around Butetown and Cardiff Bay.

Andrew Barnett, UK director of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, said: "We are keen to reflect the social and cultural breadth of the Foundation's interests, working with organisations to extend their reach in ways that can influence artistic practice in the UK and internationally. Our aim is that on-going connections should be established between participants and communities with demonstrable social and cultural benefits. To this end there will be a careful evaluation process so that the lessons learned inform the development of new models of working that can be replicated elsewhere."

Artistic Director of National Theatre Wales, John McGrath, said: "National Theatre Wales is absolutely delighted to be given this fantastic opportunity from the Gulbenkian Foundation. De Gabay was initiated and will be steered throughout by the very people who will be central to the performance - the community of Butetown in Cardiff, and in particular the young Somali men who are hoping to change the way the world sees them and their peers, through the power of their words and images. We are very excited to be embarking on this journey with them."

An important factor in the decision to support this project was that the idea came directly from its participants, providing a theme which, given National Theatre Wales' reputation for excellence, will be explored with the highest production values. The project meets the Foundation's criteria of being innovative, involving and international and will create a model for participatory theatre that is genuinely participant-led, spectacular and accessible for a range of audiences, and long-lasting in its impact.

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For more information, more images or interview requests please contact:

Felicity Luard, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation at 020 7012 1410, 07766 348 631, fluard@gulbenkian.org.uk; Siân Ede 07751 723 224

Catrin Rogers, National Theatre Wales, 029 2035 3077, 07540 686 725, catrinrogers@nationaltheatrewales.org

Notes to Editors

The Gulbenkian performance grant
Worth £175,000, the project grant - £75,000 immediately for R&D and a further £100,000 to support the final production in 2013 - devised and funded by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, supports the development of a new performance piece in which leading professionals will work with disadvantaged communities.

De Gabay
De Gabay will feature a site-specific exploration of the Butetown/Cardiff Bay area, with a focus on the young lives and dreams that flow through it. Music and poetry will be central to the performance. Audiences will encounter intimate moments of performance and spectacular larger-scale events as the streets are brought to life by the kinds of young men that many people try to avoid. For example, a moment where each audience member is exploring the contents of a thousand 'messages in bottles' that seem to have washed up on the Cardiff bay shore, might give way to another moment where hundreds of people burst into the same song on dozens of street corners as a huge image of the sea is projected on Butetown's largest tower block. Overall, the piece will be a poetic re-creation of a much misunderstood urban area, and an insight into the hidden lives, hopes and fears of young Somali men.

Advisory panel
Philip Cave, Director of Participation and Engagement, Arts Council
Graham Devlin, independent arts consultant
Rose Fenton, Chair of Without Walls, co-founder of London International Festival of Theatre
Shreela Ghosh, independent arts consultant, Trustee of the European Cultural Foundation, and until recently Director of Free Word
Paul Heritage, Artistic Director of People's Palace Projects
Simon Mellor, General Director of the Manchester International Festival
Gillian Moore, Head of Contemporary Culture, Southbank Centre
Antonio Pinto Ribeiro, chief curator of the Next Future Program - a Gulbenkian Program of Contemporary Culture, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon

National Theatre Wales
Since the curtain was raised on its first production in March 2010, National Theatre Wales - Wales' first English-language national theatre company - has staged 13 productions in locations across the country. As a non-building based company, National Theatre Wales is free to stage productions anywhere in the country, bringing its work directly to its audience. A nightclub in Bridgend, five miners' institutes in the south Wales valleys, a house in Penygroes, a beach in Prestatyn, and a military training range on the Brecon Beacons have all served as theatre stages over the past year. Twelve thousand people attended the finale of The Passion in Port Talbot - a third of the town's population - in an event hailed as "one of the most outstanding theatrical events of the decade" (The Observer).

Alongside the productions, National Theatre Wales is pioneering in its community engagement. In its first year, 12 free Assemblies were held - public events in which local artists and residents tackle local issues - in 12 communities. The company also helped set up a Young Critics' scheme in Bridgend, a radio station in Barmouth, and a filmmakers' club in Prestatyn.

The company has just announced its second year of work, starting with its first production outside Wales at this year's Edinburgh Festival in August - The Dark Philosophers. For more information visit www.nationaltheathrewales.org

Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, UK Branch
The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation is a European charitable foundation established in Portugal in 1956 with cultural, educational, social and scientific interests. Its founder, Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian, was an Armenian born near Istanbul. Multicultural and multilingual, and a noted art collector, he spent his career bringing people from different cultures and nationalities together. Based in Lisbon with branches in London and Paris, we are in a privileged position of being able to address national and transnational issues and to act as an 'exchange' for ideas. The purpose of the UK Branch, based in London, is to help enrich and connect the experiences of people in the UK and Ireland and secure lasting, beneficial change. One of our core aims is to improve cultural understanding between cultures and through culture. For more information visit www.gulbenkian.org.uk.