Operation Leaky Roof

Aim: The Soapbox Children's Theatre is leaking! Every time it rains water drips in. Help us to buy roofing felt to fix it!

We Are Leaking! 

We need a new roof! Until we get one, we need to cover our flat roof with roofing felt to stop it from leaking!

The Soapbox Children's Theatre is based in Devonport Park, Plymouth, run by Stiltskin Theatre Company a not-for-profit grassroots organisation. The building is 82 yrs old and was built as a Mustard Gas Decontamination Unit in WW2. It has also been a scabies clinic, changing room and model railway headquarters.

Stiltskin Theatre Company took on the building in 2014. We had a VISION! To create a children's theatre, where all children, young people and their families can access theatre, the arts & cultural activities all year round.

When we took on the lease there were no toilets, or running water and the entrance was a small door. 

We have built a toilet extension, brought water to the building and installed an accessible entrance. We have fitted out the interior with an auditorium and stage, a beautiful cafe and foyer and we even house a toy shop.

We are now a Centre of Excellence for Children’s & Young People's Theatre. We produce professional theatre and are specialists in creating theatre for children as young as 6 months, right through to 100yrs. Our theatre shows are all created in-house with original and innovative storytelling. We use puppets and colourful characters to entertain our audiences, with families coming back again and again. 

We run two festivals a year; Spellbound Fairy & Goblin Festival and Wild Tribe Science, Environment & Arts Festival. We run after-school and holiday drama and art workshops where we use co-creation to engage children and young people from as young as 4 through to 18yrs. In fact, some of our participants have been with us for 10 years and we offer opportunities for our Youth Theatre to work alongside us in professional shows. We are cultivating the grounds around the theatre, establishing a community art garden in the Spellbound Wood and developing our outdoor performance spaces, including the dream to eventually build an amphitheatre space at the front of the building. 

As a social enterprise, we try to keep our ticket prices as low as possible, often running a sliding scale, pay-what-you-can scheme for tickets. Any extra funding supports families that find it hard to attend the theatre, offering the opportunity for people to access the arts as much as possible.

We completed the 1st stage of the development of the building in 2019. The next stage will include a new roof with solar panels, a rooftop cafe and outdoor classroom and a rooftop stage. We will install insulation around the whole of the building, rendering, cladding and repointing the brickwork. We will build an office, kitchen and storage and install rainwater harvesting beneath the amphitheatre that will connect with the park.

However, this vision will take time to raise funds for. In the meantime, we need a fix that will ensure our audiences and drama participants do not get rained on whilst inside the theatre.

This is where you can help. We need to buy 200 sqm of roofing felt and all the additional materials to recover the roof. With this in place, we can continue building on the fantastic work that happens at the theatre for generations to come.

• Thank you!