Good Chance Announces Summer Events At Somerset House And Southbank Centre

Good Chance have today announced two Encampment events at Somerset House on the north bank of the Thames this summer. In addition, they are delighted to confirm award-winning actress Cush Jumbo and prize-winning journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown will be included in the Encampment line-up at Southbank Centre, as previously announced, taking place inside the iconic Good Chance Dome, direct from the Calais 'Jungle' refugee camp from 30 July to 7 August.

Somerset House will host The Machine to Be Another, an interactive virtual reality experience that allows users to experience the bodies and memories of volunteer refugees, from 30 July to 7 August, and Encampment Installation, a collection of tents and wooden shelters destined for the Calais Jungle that will stand on Lancaster Place from 30 July to 7 August, as part of UTOPIA 2016: A Year of Imagination and Possibility - four seasons of events, exhibitions and commissions celebrating the idea of utopia to mark the 500th anniversary of Thomas More's influential text.

Be Another Lab presents
The Machine To Be Another
As part of ENCAMPMENT AT SOMERSET HOUSE
Saturday 30 July - Sunday 7 August
12pm-2pm and 4pm-6pm, daily

What would the world be like if we could see through the eyes of another?

BeAnotherLab presents a series of Embodied Narratives that allow Audience members to virtually inhabit the body of another person and experience their perspective of camp life. Hear the stories and step into the shoes of workers, volunteers and refugees around the world to understand more about asylum, displacement and day-to-day life in a refugee camp.

The Machine To Be Another is an interactive virtual reality experience designed to explore the relationship between identity and empathy, drawing from knowledge in the areas of neuroscience, storytelling and performance art.

For four years BeAnotherLab has been working with an extended community of researchers, artists, activists and members of the public to create performance-experiments related to the understanding of the other and the self. Designed to promote empathy, The Machine To Be Another explores issues such as cultural bias, immigration, physical disability bias, gender identity, generational bonding, conflict resolution and body extension.

Come and experience the story of another person.

Good Chance and A Home For Winter present
Encampment Installation
As part of ENCAMPMENT AT SOMERSET HOUSE
Saturday 30 July - Sunday 7 August
10am-6pm, daily

Good Chance and A Home For Winter will create an installation of three empty shelters in Lancaster Place, next to Somerset House. Walk among the tents and look inside the shelters which people are forced to make their homes in the Calais "Jungle" refugee camp for indefinable lengths of time. Who were the people that made these spaces their homes? Where are they now?

In March 2016 the southern section of the Calais camp was demolished. In that time 3,455 people, including 445 children, of whom 305 were unaccompanied, lost their homes. During this time many protests sprung up across the camp, from peaceful sit-ins, to hunger strikes, people were pushed to breaking point as they asked: where are we meant to go?

After the installation closes, the shelters will be taken to Calais to provide much needed materials for building there.

Encampment at Southbank Centre

On the other side of the Thames, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown will chair the Nights of Hope panel discussion 'Why Women Refugees are Often Unheard and Unseen', in association with Women for Refugee Women, followed by music from Maya Youssef on 4 August. This discussion will take place in the Good Chance Dome on the Festival Terrace at Southbank Centre's annual Festival of Love.

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown came to the UK in 1972 from Uganda, and completed her M.Phil. in literature at Oxford in 1975. She is a journalist who has written for The Guardian, Observer, The New York Times, Time Magazine, Newsweek, the Evening Standard, The Mail and other newspapers and is now a regular columnist. She is also a radio and television broadcaster and author of several books. Her book, No Place Like Home, was an autobiographical account of a twice removed immigrant. Her prizes and awards include the Commission for Racial Equality special award for outstanding contribution to journalism in 2000, the George Orwell Prize for political journalism in 2002, and an MBE for services to journalism in 2001 (which she returned in 2003).

Cush Jumbo will perform Nassim Soleimanpour's internationally acclaimEd White Rabbit Red Rabbit at Encampment at Southbank Centre on 7 August.

With no rehearsals, no director and a script waiting in a sealed envelope on stage, internationally acclaimEd White Rabbit Red Rabbit is a potent reminder of the transgressive and transformative power of theatre.

Forbidden to leave his native Iran, Nassim Soleimanpour wrote a play that travelled the world in his place. It crossed borders, found refuge in theatres, and was given voice by a host of actors across the world. Since its world premiere in 2011, White Rabbit Red Rabbit has been performed over 1000 times, including by Juliet Stevenson, Whoopi Goldberg, Nathan Lane, John Hurt, Simon McBurney, Stephen Rea, Sinead Cusack and Ken Loach.

Cush Jumbo is a writer and performer whose theatre credits include: Taming of The Shrew (The Public Theatre, Broadway), Julius Caeser (The Donmar Warehouse), The River (Square Theatre, Broadway), She Stoops To Conquer (The National Theatre) and Pygmalion (Royal Exchange). Her screen credits include The Good Wife, Vera, Remainder and upcoming City Of Tiny Lights. In November 2013 she was presented with The Evening Standard Emerging Talent Award for her one woman show Josephine and I which was performed at The Bush and then transferred to The Public in New York. In 2013 she was also nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Olivier Award for her portrayal of Marc Anthony in Phyllida Lloyd's Julius Caesar at The Donmar Warehouse.

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