Weathering the storm: Noye's Fludde with Harrow School

A mid the familiar hubbub of summer term 2022, lockdown months may seem distant. Many practitioners in the creative arts spent the summer of 2020 doing everything possible to facilitate students’ collaboration online, while simultaneously dreaming about future projects in which people could share the same physical space once again. The word ‘connection’ flashed incessantly from computer screens when the internet signal wavered: an ongoing reminder of all that seemed to be at stake.

As time went on and opportunities for live performance became distantly possible, the question facing all of us seemed to be less ‘what?’ than ‘why?’ How had our experience of the pandemic reframed the essential purpose of performance for young people and communities? It was in this context that Noye's Fludde, performed by a company comprising nine schools and community organisations from the London Borough of Harrow, was conceived.