Meet Camille Cowe

Camille Cowe is Head of Community Arts at the Everyman Theatre in Cheltenham. She is one of CWR’s longest standing and most dedicated supporters. The work that she does as part of CWR is an amazing example of what we can achieve to support, celebrate and lift up those who join our community seeking refuge. A lot of her work is behind the scenes and not well-known amongst our wider supporters so we are taking the opportunity here to share just some of the reasons why she is an integral part of our community. 

Previously, Camille has worked with other marginalised communities, including with travellers, homeless citizens and the African Community Foundation. She began working with Gloucestershire Action for Refugees and Asylum Seekers (GARAS) over 20 years ago and it was GARAS’s founder Adele Owen who put her in touch with CWR, after Camille’s sister attended a CWR summer community picnic. In CWR’s first series of events for National Refugee Week, Camille immediately organised a great week of activities for the Syrian refugee children who were in Cheltenham at the time – they came to the Everyman Theatre for circus skills workshops and their own magic show. 

At the next summer picnic, Camille facilitated activities such as face painting and circus skills, and has continued to do so at every picnic ever since. 

At our monthly Welcome Cafe, Camille leads arts and crafts workshops for the teenagers who attend. She has also joined in with informal English lessons, and entertained and encouraged Cafe members with sketches of job interviews gone wrong. Her skill in nonverbal acting helped everyone to understand the context of a disastrous job interview, bringing us all together with our laughter. 

At our weekly Hub for people seeking asylum, Camille empowers participants to join in plays and provides acting training. She has been able to encourage Hub members to take on leading roles in the activities, leading warm ups or other regular activities, such as dialogue acting tasks. It brings people who have experienced trauma out of their shell and it is wonderful over time to see hesitant participants warm up to the activities, taking on acting roles (from a beanstalk and a pumpkin, all the way to Cinderella) and even doing some directing. 

One budding actor from the group, encouraged by Camille, has now performed with Jacob’s Well Theatre Company and even at Cheltenham’s Playhouse! These experiences have allowed him a clear sense of achievement and given him the possibility to contribute to the local community by bringing joy through acting and sharing poetry. Something that is very difficult for asylum seekers’ to find while subject to rules refusing them permission to work. 

Drama, Camille says, can raise a person’s self-esteem. Performing together allows a shared experience across borders and language differences, creating a sense of belonging after the long journey that those who have come as refugees or asylum seekers have been through.

Camille overcomes language barriers through technology and drama at the same time. Apps help translate detailed instructions, but she says the real communication is non-verbal, and she is always happy to draw a silly stick figure when all else fails. A recent newcomer to her Hub workshops spoke no English, yet managed to buy an imaginary bus ticket, and looked shocked when the imaginary bus pulled away right in front of him.

And drama isn’t the only tool Camille uses. At the regular women’s group that CWR hosts, Camille has enabled other forms of physical experience to bring people together and blossom in confidence. She has run a well-received Zumba class and a felt crafts workshop. The activities with the women’s group provide a distraction from the everyday worries of the women in the group who work hard to support their families in a new and foreign country after fleeing wars and persecution. 

In 2021, inspired by her personal volunteering for the Good Chance Theatre Dome in Sheffield the year before, Camille came up with a proposal to bring the international theatre event, Walk with Amal, to life in Cheltenham. The Walk with Amal was followed closely by CWR throughout 2021 as the incredible puppet of a refugee child whose name means hope, walked the 8,000 miles from Turkey to the UK. With the support of her Chief Executive at the Everyman Theatre, Camille led and commissioned several incredibly successful activities, art projects and events inspired by the Walk with Amal. 

These included the commissioning of a sculpture of a Displaced Child; the commission was won by local artist Natasha Houseago who took a dead tree stump found at Nature in Art and brought it to life in the shape of a little girl, carrying a backpack. Her backpack was filled with peg dolls made in school classes and youth groups that Camille held all over the county. The statue is very tactile and sturdy – a statue that is meant to be welcomed in different spaces and that has been welcomed to Gloucester Cathedral, the Everyman Theatre, Gloucester Archives and the University of Gloucestershire. The Everyman is raising money for GARAS with a QR code on the display boards that accompany the sculpture. 

Camille also commissioned a spoken word piece from rapper JPDL, who met a number of people seeking refuge and asylum in the UK and created this powerful piece.

A mural was painted in town to promote the Walk with Amal (link to photo and maybe the video clip we filmed in front of it). Sadly, the mural was later defaced, but Camille dealt with the set back so that soon a timely new mural with a Christmas message of welcome to refugees was up in its place. 

You can see Camille give a talk to CWR supporters about Walk with Amal, with Emily and Naomi Webb, here.

Camille celebrated the arrival of Amal in the UK by taking a group of people seeking asylum to greet her in Oxford. She also provided 40 tickets for refugees and asylum seekers in our local community to attend last year’s pantomime. 

Camille is incredibly fortunate to have a Chief Executive at The Everyman, Mark Goucher, who supports and enables this sustained work.

Camille’s dedication, energy and creativity has enriched and enlivened so much of the work and activities CWR has done, most of which, you can see, would not have been possible without her. Her work at the Everyman Theatre is made possible by the Everyman Community Engagement Programme, the Barnwood Trust and the Benevolent Fund, for whose support CWR is also incredibly grateful. Above all, however, we are grateful to Camille herself and look forward to all the exciting and unexpected projects which are surely yet to come!