History

Bath Arts Workshop was founded in 1969.  It was originally a number of community projects that have become businesses that still reside in Bath, including The Natural Theatre Company, which was founded in 1970.  The others went their separate ways, leaving The Natural Theatre Company as the trading name for Bath Arts Workshop.

By the 1880s the company had started touring world-wide with its street theatre and indoor shows. The company became a RFO (Regularly Funded Organisation for the Arts Council).  The Natural Theatre Company purchased the present three story HQ in 1994 with National Lottery funding.  In 2000 the company was at its largest when it was the resident street company at The Millennium Dome.  In 2011, the company lost its Arts Council core funding.

In January 2014, Andy Burden was appointed The Director and introduced a new strategic future for the company without public subsidy. A new ethos and value system has ushered in new creative developments and opportunities based on a new artistic vision. Priorities became:

• Education, participation and community work
• New immersive shows
• Heritage and Tourism performances

Mission Statement:

Our mission is to create inclusive, engaging, and accessible theatre and interactive performance in the most unexpected places. This is summarised as ‘Surprising performance in surprising places’.

Our values:

We are passionate about theatre-making without boundaries.

We aim to:

Animate towns and cities by creating intimate performance on an epic scale.