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About Us

Over the years Team has built up a strong reputation in both the arts and education. Team would only consider reputable partners that adhere to the same principles and ethics and whose corporate image or services do not conflict with Team's mission or values.

MISSION STATEMENT

TEAM aims to produce theatre for children and young people to high artistic standards, primarily in their own formal learning environment, that:

provides an authentic experience that resonates with their own lives.
challenges them to feel, think, interact and do within the dramatic context.
opens them to the potential of theatre.

"The idea that through watching a drama like this they can progress to discuss and evaluate choices made speaks volumes. The most important thing to them was the consequences of your actions. To have 'consequences' played out visually was very powerful and thought provoking."
Teacher, about the Black Ice programme

WHAT WE DO

TEAM Educational Theatre Company is Ireland’s longest established Theatre-in-Education Company and has earned national acclaim over the last thirty-three years working within the Primary and Post Primary system serving up to 140 schools in the state every year. Over the years TEAM’s work has been influenced and driven by some of the key thinkers in the areas of education and children’s and young people’s arts in Ireland – Professor John Coulihan, Dr. Concepta Conaty and John McArdle.

TEAM’s core staff work with professional actors and writers to create interactive educational theatre in the pupils’ own learning environment – their school. The theatre TEAM makes is based on a specially commissioned script, and is designed to offer a true theatre experience, pitched to suit the pupils’ needs with significant opportunities for learning at the heart of every programme. A large part of TEAM’s work in developing a TEAM programme is to link the themes and situations of the plays, workshops and resource materials with specific objectives of the curricula at both primary and post-primary level. We have collaborated with some of Ireland's best-known writers, including Frank McGuinness, Bernard Farrell, Maeve Ingoldsby and Michael West to create dramatic contexts that reflect the contemporary concerns and values of Irish children.

We produce two programmes per year, one for Primary and one for Post Primary schools, all of which have an educational question at their heart, and require the students' active involvement in seeking to address that question.
We present, for the most part, original plays by Irish writers especially developed to focus on the needs and interests of contemporary Irish students from age 4 to 18.
We provide models of classroom drama practice that can be used by teachers to complement the everyday educational needs of their students.
We promote students' engagement with the arts both as interpreters of high quality professional theatre and as makers of their own dramatic worlds.
We offer a supportive and properly resourced environment for actors and other artists to develop their skills as partners in children's creative development.
We facilitate the implementation of specific educational initiatives, particularly those involving disadvantaged pupils, by developing models of practice designed to meet the challenges inherent in such work.

"TEAM sticks pins in the bubbles of assumption and forces young people to become aware of themselves and others."
Writer John McArdle.

HISTORY

"Have imagination, will travel".

In 1974 the Young Abbey was disbanded chiefly because of finance; certain individuals went on the following year to create TEAM. The name TEAM show’s the company’s roots: Theatre-in-Education Amharclann na Ministreach (the Irish language name for Abbey Theatre).

Under the direction of John Lynch this new phenomenon Theatre-in-Education (TIE) appeared on the theatre scene in Ireland. The company arrived into schools bearing a message for students: "Have imagination, will travel". By this the people behind the newly formed TEAM Educational Theatre Company - a group of actors and directors who had come together in the Young Abbey - meant not merely that they would physically bring shows to schools in whatever part of the country they were wanted, but that creatively they would use theatre as a vehicle for transporting the students to wherever their imaginations should lead them. This determination to explore the world from a child's point of view not only set a standard for the children's arts organisations that came after, it was also a precursor and a significant influence on the development of a child-centred approach to education that has become the norm in Ireland ever since.

Now thirty-three years on TEAM still holds to the same principles of developing and producing inclusive dynamic theatre that challenges its audience to set their own agenda in life, and always with the conviction that an education without art is not an education.

Over the years Team has worked in all areas of first and second level education - Primary and Post-Primary, mainstream and special needs, urban and rural, inner city and outer suburb.

AWARDS

The Irish Times/ESB Theatre Award (2000)

Martin Murphy receives an Irish Times/ESB Theatre Award on behalf of Team for '25 years of consistent excellence in 2000. TEAM was also nominated in the Irish Times Theatre Awards for Best Costume Design: Carol Betera for How High is Up? (2007)

AIB Better Ireland Award in the Arts/Culture Section

TEAM is a registered charity supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, the Department of Education and Science, Dublin City Council, Dundalk County Council, Fingal County Council, Meath County Council, and Monaghan County Council.