Charity Champion
Business Awards can make a great impact on your charity or CIC. We spoke to Sarah Ellis, winner of Charity Champion 2019 from TIC Box Productions, about her business and about the impact her company has had on an enormous amount of teenagers and young people.
What does your charity do?
TIC Box stands for Theatre Inspiring Change, high impact theatre with a difference. We are a theatre company who do theatre in education and theatre in business. We believe in combating prejudice and discrimination.
TIC Box is all about starting conversations, showcasing real stories through a combination of theatre and interaction, called Forum theatre. The idea of Forum theatre is to let young individual’s explore issues that affect them in day to day life. By showcasing real stories and empowering them to think in the shoes of another character. This encourages them to make active changes and to know what to do when faced with the problem themselves. We cover topics such as domestic abuse, homophobia, transphobia, racism, crime and bullying.
The plan then was to do what we do with young people but with adults instead. It all started with a play about grief which looked at how people deal with grief, particularly men. Our budget wasn’t large so we decided to invite people privately and ask them not to tell anyone else about this experience. This is when ‘The Shhh Experience’ was born. ‘The Shhh experience’ helps raise money for TIC Box productions. This experience doesn’t involve theatre spaces such as a stage but instead immerses you into the centre of the action.
What was your background before TIC Box?
I always knew I wanted to go to drama school and that’s exactly what I did. I was involved in lots of amateur dramatics and musical theatre. While I was at drama school I got into a community theatre course. This led me to discover how theatre can change people’s lives. I believe this is when my passion started and what has led me to starting my business.
I felt if I wanted to take this path seriously, to help others, work with young people and change the world I needed to train to become a teacher. The next step was to get into schools to work with young people. This was successful and this enabled me to understand what they really wanted to talk about.
What made you enter the Best Business Women Awards?
We knew the importance of business awards. My main passion is the work we do at TIC Box and I am very positive that we can change things for the better. Our business has shown that we do make an impact on young lives. This can be seen by the work we did with Stevenage Council over five years, where teenage pregnancies went down by 15 percent.
We had already been entered for various awards such as the European Diversity Award and the National Diversity Award so we understood being nominated for these awards would help us get recognised. I entered the Best Business Woman Awards because I felt it had a real sense of wanting to congratulate people for working hard and producing something that meant something.
What would you say to another business thinking of entering?
Business awards put your charity or CIC on the map. I would say the most important thing to remember is that you and your business deserve to be recognised for all the hard work you are doing. Secondly, these business awards help you get a place on the map and accelerates your growth. I was delighted to find out that The Best Business Women Awards are fundraising for us in 2020 and this will help us to fund more projects.
Sarah appeared on episode 12 of The Business Awards Show where she discusses winning Charity Champion. Have a listen here.
