Outside Edge Theatre Company is the UK’s only theatre company and participatory arts charity focused on addiction. Based in Tower Hamlets, our free peer-led drama workshops provide a unique arts-based approach to maintain recovery from substance misuse. OETC’s specially trained staff facilitate workshops that enable participants to maximise their emotional wellbeing, improve physical health and increase confidence and self-esteem, whilst producing awareness raising theatre productions.

In 2020/21 we supported 359 vulnerable adults across London and further afield with complex needs, which in addition to substance misuse include mental ill health, criminal justice system contact and homelessness. Through engaging in weekly arts-based activities and via Pastoral Care and Wraparound Support, we help people to build Recovery Capital so they can live happier, healthier lives, free from harmful behaviours. Last year, 97% of service users said that we supported their recovery.

For more information on our impact, please see our service users talk about our work with them on BBC One's Sunday Morning Live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuM_f6T9OxU

We were awarded the 2021 Culture, Health and Wellbeing Alliance Award for co-producing our offer with service users, the 2020 Mayor of London's Volunteering Award for Delivering Differently during the Covid-19 pandemic and the 2020 Hearts for the Arts Award for Best Arts, Health and Wellbeing Project.