Adrian Harris founded Brass Works Theatre in 2012 with the aim of establishing a professional theatre presence in South Gloucestershire – an area that is underserved in the theatre arts.

Based originally in premises on the site of the historic Champion Brass Works in Tower Lane, Warmley, we worked hard to build our close relationship with an enthusiastic audience, drawing theatregoers from the surrounding area and further afield.

We produce original work including new plays that often reflect life in South Gloucestershire, and fresh adaptations of classic texts. We won substantial Arts Council England funding to present our debut production, Engineers’ Blue in 2012, and for Deep Pit in 2014 – both plays by Adrian Harris drew on South Gloucestershire’s rich industrial heritage.

In autumn 2016 we decided we could better serve our audience as a production company than by maintaining a permanent base. We’re doing this by pursuing not only theatre production projects but also theatre-in-education initiatives and cross-media content generation.

Our first major theatre-in-education project started in autumn 2016, From the Farm to the Front was a Heritage Lottery Fund financed initiative to develop and deliver a play based on the experiences of people from the county during the Battle of the Somme (1 July – 18 November 1916). We worked in partnership with South Gloucestershire Council, some of the area’s schools and heritage centres, and with the University of the West of England to gather material for the play. We published Adrian Harris’ script and distributed copies to schools as an enduring teaching resource.

We have also been active in introducing young people to the theatre arts with two access to drama workshops for Oldland Parish Council’s Youth Academy at The Batch Community Centre in Cadbury Heath.