Newly appointed to Arts Council England’s National Portfolio, Icon Theatre (established 2002) is an award-winning theatre and participatory arts charity. 

Icon creates large-scale site-specific, outdoor and immersive theatre productions by bringing world-class artists into collaboration with communities. Recent productions include The Ballad of St John’s Car Park, which told the story of the local Black Lives Matter movement’s 2020 campaign to rename a car park that commemorated prominent slave trader John Hawkins; If Not Now (Rochester Castle), which explored how communities can come together to challenge and transform poverty, prejudice, and the climate crisis, and The Chatham Witch (Fort Amherst), exploring the extraordinary history of women in Medway through the ages.  

Icon runs an award-winning young people’s programme and participatory theatre programmes in schools, and drop-in centres in criminal justice settings.  

For over a decade, Icon has been commissioned with other locally based arts companies to create a much-loved interactive Christmas show for early years children that is performed at The Brook Theatre in Chatham. 

ZooNation was founded by Kate Prince in 2002 and is best known for its work in the theatre, creating full length narrative dance productions influenced in equal parts by musical theatre, Hip Hop culture and music. ZooNation’s work is fortified with an extensive programme of engagement and talent development, working with different communities and young artists to expand their skills, knowledge, and confidence in our style of dance theatre.  

ZooNation productions include: Into the Hoods (Novello Theatre 2008) which was the West End’s first Hip Hop dance show, Some Like it Hip Hop (Sadler’s Wells Peacock 2011-13 and UK tour), Groove on Down the Road (SouthBank Centre 2013-14),  ZooNation: Unplugged (Sadler’s Wells 2013), The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party (Royal Opera House Linbury Studio 2014 and the Roundhouse 2016), Into the Hoods: Remixed (Sadler’s Wells Peacock 2015-16 and UK tour), SYLVIA (The Old Vic 2018 and 2023 ). In 2020 Kate created, directed and choreographed Message In A Bottle (Sadler’s Wells & Universal Music) at the Peacock Theatre. 

A critically acclaimed, award-winning touring company, and nominated for the National Dance Awards 2022, the Amina Khayyam Dance Company (AKDC) makes touring work using the South Asian dance Kathak as the core narrative.  It works in collaboration with those who are culturally least engaged, economically challenged and societally disenfranchised – with a focus on the marginalised female voice, not just from the mainstream but from within their own community – a place from where its founder and AD, the critically acclaimed dancer and choreographer, Amina Khayyam comes.  The Company adds theatre, live art, and technology, striving to make relevant, engaging work through a process of collaboration, participation, exploration, and opportunities for creative and cultural expression- shaping a process that empowers women creatively as stakeholders. The work’s dramaturgy is explored through the sub-culture context of this process, and made to transpose to the mainstream audience, so that the targeted sector’s perspective, aspiration and voice is heard widely.  

AKDC treats Kathak as a contemporary form thereby transcends any ‘classical’ or ‘modern’ precepts to its approach. It uses Kathak vocabulary to transpose it on a modern body dialogue, in the process subverting its many facets to carve out an emotion performed to a contemporary narrative. It believes the dance form is evolving with progressions demanded by the contemporary zeitgeist, in the same way it did so from the demands of the Mughals, the last time it took a major step forward.  At its heart, AKDC emphasises Kathak as a storytelling form – an approach that has allowed it to use its uniquely placed and equipped vocabulary to tell new and urgent stories of global importance.  

Based in UK (Slough), the Company, since its formation in 2013 has made 15 pieces of work, performed over 160 shows in over 40 venues (incl outdoors) & digital platforms, nationally and internationally.