Mary Freeman Scholarships
One scholarship for an Undergraduate student and one scholarship for a Postgraduate student have been donated by Mary and Peter Freeman to support the new generation of Applied Theatre practitioners.
Courses: BA (Hons) Drama, Applied Theatre and Education, MA Applied Theatre, PG Certificate Applied Theatre with Young People
Eligibility: Home/ELQ/Overseas
Number of awards: 2
Individual award value:
Undergraduate award: £15,000
Postgraduate award: £5,000
Duration of award:
Undergraduate award: 3 years
Postgraduate award: 1 year
Award per Year: £5,000
Application Details:
Applicants interested in this fund must hold an offer of admission for a relevant course. Details on how to apply can be found in your Admissions offer letter from Central.
About Mary Freeman
Mary graduated from the teaching course at Central in 1972, and with an MA in Arts in Education in 1999.
The focus of her career has been the development and application of improvisational drama, and the use of these techniques and interventions in allowing participants to develop resilience and enable agency within their own unique and challenging situations. Using improvisation, storytelling and creative workshops, Mary worked with both children and adults in specific environments. These have included inpatient and outpatient units of the psychiatric department of Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago, Illinois and more recently, the Chelsea Children’s Hospital School in London, and women detainees of HMP.
With fellow MA graduate, Alison Clarke and her company Dramatic Results, the focus of enabling agency using arts and improvisational drama was further explored in the project “Writing on Walls”. They evolved this concept of women talking to women as a collaborative approach between women detainees in HMP Send, associates of Dramatic Results, and women across the community. This Applied Arts project was funded by grants from The National Lottery, Guildford Borough Council, and South East ARTS. This programme proved transformative for all those involved, and for some was a catalyst in changing the direction of their careers.
The Mary Freeman Scholarships are the tangible expression of Mary’s conviction that drama and the creative arts can spawn both genuine and enduring growth in meeting and managing the challenges and trials of the human experience. She has extended this award to Central students to foster their education and thereby ensure that the transformative power of shared story-making continues to be an enduring resource for all communities.
