Riversmeet produces high quality writing, performance and teaching which engage with contemporary issues by linking the past to the present.
The different parts of the Riversmeet project are held together by a simple proposition. That the past can help us understand the present. What the past doesn’t offer us is a series of blueprints by which to understand where we are now. What it does offer us is analogies, other perspectives from which to view the present moment.
What do we offer you?
The opportunity to think about historical moments, their resonance within contemporary problems and how the cultural products of the past reverberate in the present.
We do this through a range of play performances, publications, teaching modules, reviews and a reflective blog which examines the process of uniting historical research with imaginative production. We also have a commitment to the principle of ‘Slow Learning’. Here Richard writes in more detail about the application of this idea to the courses we offer.
Who are we?
Dr. Richard Bradbury
Artistic Director
A writer, academic and trade unionist, whose publications include a novel, plays and poetry as well as non fiction works. His play, Become a Man, was the first to be performed in the new London City Hall as part of the bicentenary of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade commemorations. His short play, Solos and Choruses without Harmony, was part of the event TEN at the Royal Court, remembering the tenth anniversary of the Iraq invasion. Richard has taught in higher education for more than thirty years at the Universities of Warwick and Exeter and currently for the Open University.
Richard’s novel Riversmeet about Frederick Douglass in Britain and Ireland against a background of the Irish famine and political unrest in England is available from Muswell Press.
Richard is also a member of the Collectif Claude McKay and the Banjo Society working within colleagues in Marseille to promote the work of Claude McKay
Maureen Casey
Producer
Maureen Casey is an actor and group facilitator. Her professional acting life began in the 1980s and picked up again in 2014 after many years as a senior manager in the NHS and has included working in live theatre, radio and on screen. She was also for many years an honorary leadership fellow at the University of Exeter Business School.
Aidan Casey
Productions Manager
Aidan Casey is an actor and writer who trained at the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts in London. Over the last ten years he has divided his time between London and the Westcountry working across both theatre and screen.
Associates
Roelof Bakker
Designer
Roelof Bakker is a designer and artist based in Cambridge. He is the publisher/art director of Negative Press London (www.neg-press.com). His artist’s book The Spots That Never Went was Highly Commended Finalist at the 2019 Cornish Family Prize for Art and Design Publishing, presented by the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia. Here Roelof is interview by Naomi Woddis as part of "The Two of Us" (Copy and paste link): https://open.spotify.com/episode/4xdjaTf51NwXOLo1Zg8szh?si=NisUt3YZQUaK02MSG577mA
Paula Serra Santos
Marketing Associate
Paula Serra Santos graduated in English Philology from the university of Oviedo in Asturias, Spain and went on to complete her masters in Teaching Spanish as a Foreign Language at the International University of La Rioja. Over the last two years she has worked in Marketing for educational organisations as well as teaching both Spanish and English.