Good Chance Arrives at Southbank Centre from Calais 'Jungle' Camp

From Saturday 30 July to Sunday 7 August, Good Chance will find a London home on Festival Terrace at Southbank Centre's annual Festival of Love. Entitled ENCAMPMENT, the project will unite artists from the UK, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Cameroon and Guinea. Across nine days and nights, a sweeping programme of performances and events will take place inside the iconic Good Chance Dome, direct from the Calais 'Jungle' refugee camp.

Encampment will offer a mixture of ticketed and non-ticketed events, all free, including theatre, art, music, discussion and workshops, featuring special guests from around the world. The dome structure Good Chance brought to Calais was made into a hub for welcome, exchange and performance by the people from the camp who visited it every day. Encampment will raise awareness of and reinvigorate the dialogue on one of the biggest human migrations in history, giving people in the UK a chance to come together to discover more and to celebrate our extraordinary diversity and humanity.?

Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson, Artistic Directors and Co-Founders of Good Chance, said: "We worked with the residents of the Jungle camp in Calais to bring a theatre to life every day for six months. Much was made in that six months. Theatre, yes, but also paintings, music, song, poetry, puppetry, dance, rap, circus, and most importantly friends. It was a meeting place for expression, where stories could be told or forgotten, if only for an hour or so. Everyone who stepped inside saw the power of art in life, in a place where it's needed.

"We're proud to be pitching the Good Chance Dome at Southbank Centre this summer, and bringing with it the idea that we're so much better, bigger and braver when we come together and listen. Together with the incredible artists who will be building Encampment with us, we want to offer everyone the chance to meet, mix, talk and think about what we need to do. To have fun together and become excited, rather than scared, about what lies ahead. We have an opportunity here, a good chance, to develop a big new idea of who we are. And we want to seize this moment. Join us!"

Highlights will include: a brand new devised work created by Good Chance; Lebanon's Zoukak Theatre Company's bracing production, The Last Tablet; an exhibition of art created by residents of the Calais camp; Afghan kite-making with a special guest reading from Michael Morpurgo; a new work from the South London-based migrant and refugee-led theatre company, The Paper Project; childhood games from across the globe, compiled by Pan Intercultural Arts; art, world music and dance from the APOW! project by Refugee Youth; Nassim Soleimanpour's haunting nomadic play White Rabbit Red Rabbit; poetry from Exiled Writers Ink and Bards Without Borders; live music from The Calais Sessions, the Palestinian Youth Orchestra, 47SOUL, Maya Youssef and Mosi Conde; platform discussions on the role of arts in humanitarian crises and on the voices of refugee women; and much, much more.

Stephen Daldry, Chair of Good Chance, and Quintessentially Foundation have organised A Night of Hope in aid of Good Chance, supported by ATG and Sony Pictures Television, on Monday 4 July at the London Wonderground. With tickets priced from £60-£495, A Night of Hope features a thrilling line-up of special guests and live performances from some of Good Chance's biggest supporters, including Tom Odell, Maria Friedman, Songhoy Blues and Giles Fraser; auction masters Stephen Daldry and Steve Coogan; alongside more incredible artists from around the world.

The gala aims to raise funds to allow Good Chance to return to Calais to re-build in the 'Jungle' refugee camp and to continue building temporary theatres of hope wherever the need is greatest. Good Chance Calais was unprecedented: a vital and much-loved space for freedom of expression, creativity and dignity, open for all, created for and with the people living in the camp's incredibly difficult conditions.

Good Chance's A Night of Hope gala committee is led by Stephen Daldry with Joe & Joe, Ben Elliot, Sonia Friedman, AA Gill, Joyce Hytner, Toby Jones, David Lan, Suzanne Mackie, Tracey Seaward, Juliet Stevenson and Caroline Villamizar Duque.

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