In a maze made of giant playing cards and filled with enormous chess pieces, half a dozen children are laughing and trying to find a way out.
Through one hidden door, they will find a Mad Hatter’s tea party – complete with brightly coloured top hats to wear.
Through a tunnel beyond that, there are croquet games, slides into ball pools, neon mushrooms, and a white rabbit waiting to chat with them.
As these little ones make their way through this immersive Alice in Wonderland adventure, their astonishment only grows. “Look,” one shouts as a new character emerges. “It’s Cheshire Cat!”
Welcome, then, to theatre as done by Z-arts, the UK’s only arts centre dedicated to children.
Based in a converted Edwardian church in Hulme – one of Manchester’s most historically deprived and diverse neighbourhoods – this unique facility has been making theatre, dance, literature, comedy and music accessible to young children from all walks of life for a quarter of a century.
This Christmas, the centre – which is run as an independent charity – celebrated its 25th anniversary.
“What we do here – create and commission experiences designed to spark children’s love of the arts – is such a wonderful privilege, and we take that very seriously,” says Liz O’Neill, the centre’s chief executive and artistic director.
“I think once you spark that love in a child, it can lead to so many opportunities and open so many doors. It is transformative. And that is exactly our mission: to use creativity to transform lives.”
That the place is remarkable, there can be little doubt. Inside the Tardis-like building, there are two theatres (a 230-seat auditorium and an 80-seat studio), a dance space, recording studios, a children’s library, immersive experience rooms (where Adventures in Wonderland is currently on), and a whole host of art and craft points.
An atrium café bar does homemade cake – and has a wonderful dressing up box where toddlers can become literary characters. This may, in fact, be the only place in the world where you can see the Tiger That Came to Tea playing with Long John Silver.
Low-cost drama classes, dance sessions, creative writing tutorials and toddler art takeovers are run every week. Free workshops – in a variety of mediums – take place almost daily as part of the centre’s mission of using art to empower.
A book club aims to get 10s-and-over reading. Community outreach programmes go into schools and local cultural centres. The result is that almost 100,000 people interact with the centre annually.
Famous guests have included Tony Blair (as prime minister), Rio Ferdinand (as a Man Utd player) and Damien Hirst (with his shark). But more important than such notable names, says O’Neill, are those thousands of children who walk through the doors every year.
“I think one of the things we really do well is that families can turn a visit into a full day out,” she says.
“So, they might come to see a show, but then they can stay for free arts and crafts, pick up books from the library, perhaps take part in a class. Every time you come back, there’s something new to try. So, there’s a park across the road and, very often, we create do-it-yourself treasure hunts there.”
The origins of the venue date back to 1988, when Manchester City Council bought the derelict church. In 1997, the newly formed Z-arts charity took on the lease and started turning the place into an arts centre.
The transformative effect it has had on young people down the years is not necessarily easy to quantify, but success stories have come thick and fast.
The Mobo-award-nominated singer Misha B credits Z-arts with being a major influence on her decision to pursue music as a child, while Benji Reid – the Manchester theatre-maker famed for charting the black British experience – had some of his earliest work commissioned by the centre.
The venue’s current artist in residence, Beatriz Vilela, originally came through its annual Facilitate programme. Another staff member, Mia McCann-Jones, says the venue helped shape the person she is today.
“As a kid coming here, all I was really thinking about was doing my singing, doing my dancing, what pick’n’mix I was going to have in the café afterwards,” the 18-year-old says. “But, looking back now, I realise I was constantly being encouraged to express myself and introduced to new ideas and new people. I think I was always pretty confident as a kid, but it helped channel that.”
Today, Mia works front of house at the venue part-time while on a gap year after achieving A-Levels in law, criminology and sociology. She was five when she first came here.
“My dad used to bring me and my two sisters because he was really invested in us having good extracurricular activities,” she remembers. “But everywhere was so expensive. When he stumbled on Z-arts, I think it was a godsend for him.”
“Without Z-arts, I don’t know what I’d be doing right now,” says one former attendee, Sara Nadvi. “But I do know my life would have been very different.”
The 21-year-old – who suffered severe mental health issues in her teens and missed large periods of school as a result – has just graduated from the University of Cambridge with a degree in education and psychology and is now on a year out working as an au pair in Paris. And she says both of those things are a direct result of her time at the centre.
“I would never have applied to Cambridge without the confidence Z-arts instilled in me,” she says. “I certainly wouldn’t have moved, by myself, to a different country.”
She was first taken to music classes there as a toddler. Then, after seeing a show there when she was 10 or 11, she asked her parents if she could sign up for drama and comedy improv classes.
“It has this amazing subscription model where we paid like £10 a year, and I could go to as many classes and workshops as I wanted,” she remembers. “For so many kids, that basically means that this entire new world suddenly becomes open to them.”
As she struggled with those mental and physical health issues through her teens, Z-arts remained a constant positive. “It was just this beautiful, magical place where you were seen and listened to and could be silly and part of a community without any judgement,” she says.
As she fell more in love with drama, she asked her old primary school if she could teach Z-art style classes there. They said yes. From that, her desire to be a primary school teacher was born. “You can probably draw a line between Z-arts and my chosen career,” she says.
The Adventures in Wonderland experience is just finishing, and O’Neill is basking in the smiles on their young faces. “We’ve been seeing smiles like that for 25 years,” she says. “Here’s to another 25 more.”
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