A THEATRE company for people with learning disabilities has been shortlisted for a top award. 

Blue Apple Theatre is a finalist in the Local Business of the Year Award category at the Lloyds Bank British Business Excellence Awards.

Founded in 2005, Blue Apple is a theatre company for people with learning disabilities providing acting, dance, singing and film opportunities in Winchester, Andover and Southampton, and also online and hybrid access to classes. The company is artist in residence at the University of Winchester.

Sam Dace, who played the leading role in Blue Apple’s recent production of Macbeth, said: “Blue Apple is a theatre company that allows people like me to prove to other people out there that we can be something more than just people who are having to deal with their disability. It helps me to realise that I am not alone. We work together and we can do anything.”

Blue Apple’s shortlisting recognises their innovative response to the challenges faced during the Covid pandemic. Blue Apple transformed, embracing digital delivery to ensure that isolated participants could still engage in regular performing arts sessions and maintain social contact. As things returned to normal, it became clear that digital participation widens access to those who are vulnerable and nervous about leaving home, live outside Hampshire or simply enjoy this way of working, so Blue Apple has now moved some sessions online and also offers hybrid digital access to in-person sessions.

Artistic director Richard Conlon said: “When the pandemic hit it took a while for performing arts companies to take stock, have a breather, think about what they did and how they did it, and companies like ourselves which dealt in face to face in person sessions and performances that happened in theatres had the rug pulled from under us and we just needed to stop for a moment and think 'What are we at heart?' We are storytellers. Can that story get to an audience in any other way? Yes, it can.”

As regulations eased in the summer of 2021, Blue Apple adjusted the performance model again, this time for Frankenstein, combining a small live theatre cast of socially distanced performers with pre-recorded scenes of a wider cast from an outdoor location, all brought together in theatre and via digital livestream offering audiences the choice of where they accessed the performance.

Blue Apple is now on a pathway of managed growth and continues to extend its partnerships with theatre companies, locally and regionally in the UK and also overseas, most recently with similar organisations in the Czech Republic and Poland.

Professor Sarah Greer, vice-chancellor of the University of Winchester, said: “Many congratulations to Blue Apple Theatre on being shortlisted for this prestigious award. It is a beacon of excellence and well deserves this national recognition. We are very proud that Blue Apple Theatre is our Artist in Residence at the University, based on campus and at the heart of our community. We gain so much from our partnership with them.

“Blue Apple has a way of developing and nurturing people that is dear to our hearts at the University. They work with performers as we do with our students, to empower them and bring out their confidence to flourish and succeed.”