Our Artistic Director, Josephine Burton, reflects on Dash Arts’ events in Manchester and London

Over the last six months, we've travelled across the country supporting over 140 people to write speeches about things they felt passionate about and wanted to change. And last week, we celebrated this beautiful project.

At the heart of the event were our speech-makers - we heard 18 of the speeches written and delivered by our participants from Manchester Deaf Centre, HMP Styal, the Common Lot in Norwich, Banbury and Bicester College, Writer's Bloc in Redruth, Underground Lights in Coventry, Arbourthorne and Norfolk Park Men's Group in Sheffield, Theatre Royal Stratford East and Citizens UK in Brighton. It was a total joy to see and work with the participants again, bring them together from different parts of the country and to provide a platform for their inspiring words.

Alongside these participants, we heard from academics who told us about the history of speech-making and rhetoric, artists and activists who shared insights into how they use their voice to speak truth to power, and professional speech-writers who gave us the inside gossip on what's it's like to write for politicians. We had a great conversation about whether the fact that a politician didn't write their own speech undermined their authenticity and how communities that have been consistently marginalised can be heard. Plus a few fabulous actors brought some well-known speeches to life for us, there was some really thoughtful questions and reflections from our audiences AND I had a chance to share what I'd learnt from the participants about England and what needs to change, alongside our academic partners, Alan Finlayson and Henriette Van Der Blom.

It was an exhausting and exhilarating couple of days. Most powerfully for me, this project feels hugely optimistic and hopeful. As we enter winter and the news from the wider world feels relentlessly bleak, it's incredibly heart-warming to meet and work with people who are passionate about changing the world for the better and have ideas on how to do it.

And now, we've begun the next leg of the journey - making a show the brings all of these ideas to the stage.