20 Years of Theatr Cynefin

Theatr Cynefin began as a Millennium Festival project called Cynefin 2000 which I started as Co-Director of Theatr Fforwm Cymru in 1999 in the town of Fishguard in West Wales.

Working with Community Artist Mike Hotson we created a sensory labyrinth in an industrial unit with the folk of Fishguard.

Many projects followed all over the world and in 2004 I left Theatr Fforwm Cymru to focus on Cynefin.

Mike and I parted ways in 2006 and Cynefin became Theatr Cynefin and a limited company.

In 2009 another organisation came into being, a network of 15 European companies that had been inspired by the methodology and approach which is now better known as slt (Sensory Labyrinth Theatre). The Republic of the Imagination became a banner under which many co-productions were created in several countries, films, slt and Context Oriented Theatre experiments such as 'The Conference of the Birds.'

Throughout, sporadically active and sometimes dormant, Theatr Cynefin has been a frame within which to develop slt projects and many emerging artists have been along for the ride at different times of that journey.

Theatr Cynefin continues to be relevant and is currently working with Ebbw Fawr Learning Community on a project to create an slt performance around the neuroscience of well-being - the happy brain.

It also is a frame for the Academy of CoArts which offers training courses in the methodology developed over that 20 years.