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Barbican Box

Artist playing piano

Barbican Box is a portable Box filled with the ingredients for making and creating original artistic work, inspired by our multi-arts programme.

Barbican Box launched in 2011 as a theatre education programme for secondary schools and Further Education colleges in east London. Today, Barbican Box works across art forms, including music, theatre, poetry, and visual art, and across 40 primary, secondary, SEN schools and FE colleges in east London, with a national development programme in Manchester, Harlow, and Norfolk.

Created in collaboration with artists and associate companies such as Complicite, Max Richter, Michael Rosen, Serious, and Internationaal Theater Amsterdam, the Boxes contain a range of stimuli designed to encourage an imaginative, adventurous approach to arts learning. 

We are pausing the Barbican Box programme for the 22/23 academic year. 

The Barbican Box is supported by The Allan and Nesta Ferguson Charitable Trust, The Boris Karloff Charitable Foundation, Mactaggart Third Fund, Tower Hill Trust, Trevor Fenwick and Jane Hindley

Barbican Box 2022/23

We’ve been running the Barbican Box programme for over 10 years and have been thrilled with the creativity and enjoyment it has helped nurture over that time, and would like to thank all the artists and schools that have been involved.

We will be pausing the programme this academic year (22/23), as it is important for us that the programme always operates to meet the needs of the students and teachers involved and this pause will allow us an opportunity to do that and to reflect on the Barbican Box model. We will be using the wealth of evaluation that teachers and students have contributed over the last decade as part of this process, as well as continuing to talk to teachers directly about how we work and getting your feedback.

We would really welcome any feedback you have therefore on the programme and its impact in your school.

If you have any other questions too of course, please get in touch via [email protected].

Discover Barbican Box 2021

Barbican Box 2021

In 2021 we partnered with Harlow Playhouse, HOME in Manchester and PEACH West Norfolk to deliver Barbican Box projects exploring poetry, creative gift giving and school wellbeing.