Where it all began

It all started with a chain reaction…

Chain Reaction started life in 1993 as a project run by a community arts organisation based in the London Borough of Barking & Dagenham. Seven young female students studying Performing Arts at Barking College were chosen to write and perform a piece of theatre which aimed to provide young people with accurate information about smoking. The performance was called Chain Reaction. 

The original intention was a one-off tour to schools and youth centres in Barking & Dagenham but due to the phenomenal success of the show, the group of actresses began touring the show across other London boroughs.

The rest is history…

Developing for over 25 years

Motivated by that initial success and a huge passion for making a positive change to people’s lives, in 1994 Sarah Smit and two other actresses set about using theatre to communicate important messages about personal, social and health issues. Chain Reaction was officially born!

Since this date, with Sarah at the helm as our Artistic Director, we have developed twelve educational theatre shows on issues that affect young people.

An impressive reputation

We’ve gained an outstanding reputation for delivering effective engaging issue-based workshops to young people, including young offenders and those who are considered ‘at risk’ of disengaging from society. And we’ve also become very successful at developing mainstream theatre projects for adults, training videos for corporate companies and issue-based theatre productions for the public and private sector.

Our passion, energy and enthusiasm are still as strong as ever, and, with a wealth of skills and experience developed over the years, delivering inspirational theatre projects to young people in disadvantaged areas is still the reason we get up in the morning!

Over 400,000 young people impacted

When Chain Reaction started way back in the distant 90s, we never dreamed that we would reach so many young people and help make so many amazing changes to the communities that we grew up in. Since 1994, we are proud to say we have worked with over 408,000 young people – that’s more than a third of a million young people who have felt the positive effects of our work!