albion
Welcome to Albion - our exploration of what it means to be English and what we mean by England.
Since 2022, we’ve been working across landscape and language, digging deep into folk and written histories, oral traditions, music, storytelling, theatre and performance. We’re searching beyond the flags and the rose-tinted nostalgia, to understand what England is today.
Over the last few years at Dash, we’ve adapted a work of classic English literature, George Eliot’s novel Middlemarch and set it in 1980s Coventry, collaborating with a professional and community cast of almost 30 people to create an immersive promenade theatre production. We’ve produced live events and podcast series, exploring questions of identity, belonging and power in 21st-century England.
And crucially, over the last three years, we’ve run speech-making workshops across the country, working with over 600 people to help them write and deliver speeches about what we need to do to change tomorrow. We’ve listened to them talk about who we are and who we could be.
Albion will culminate in 2026, with our new theatre production, Our Public House, inspired by all these speeches which will tour the country in Spring / Summer 2026.
events
albion features in our PODCAST
Three years. 80 workshops. One thousand speeches. One pub.
As Our Public House takes its final bow, so too does Albion; our long exploration of who we are as a country, and who we might yet become.
In this closing episode, Josephine reflects on the whole journey: from a tent in a field at Latitude Festival in 2019 to stages across England, from the first hesitant speeches in community halls and prison workshops to songs performed live every night on stage by a cast who made those words their own.
In this episode of OffScript, Dash Arts' Artistic Director Josephine Burton heads out into the land itself and into the long, tangled history of who has felt at home there, and who has had to fight to claim it.
Join us to explore connection, place, and the ever-evolving landscape of English identity.
First, she talks with Toni Murphy, founder of Touching Grass, a community creating space for queer women, trans and non-binary people of colour to experience the outdoors as somewhere that belongs to them. Toni describes the hiking trips, camping and the careful acts of presence in landscapes that haven't always felt welcoming.
Then Josephine takes the longer view. What does history tell us about who has always assumed the countryside is theirs and what have people done when that assumption has been challenged? With Professor Alan Finlayson, one of the UK's leading political and social thinkers, she traces the deep roots of England's relationship with its land, all the way to the present and to Andy Burnham MP's recent journey down from the north to Westminster, reclaiming something as he went.
In this episode of OffScript, Dash Arts' Artistic Director Josephine Burton is joined by Dr. Neil Buttery—food historian, cook, and the voice behind The British Food History Podcast—for a delicious and wide-ranging conversation about the edible stories that define us.
In this episode of OffScript, Dash Arts' Artistic Director Josephine Burton is joined by Lynne Murphy, Professor of Linguistics at the University of Sussex, author of The Prodigal Tongue, and the American voice behind the long-running blog Separated by a Common Language, for a wide-ranging and surprising conversation about the language we think we own.
In this episode of OffScript, Josephine Burton is joined by historian, journalist, and writer Paula Akpan. A specialist in Black British history and queer identity, Paula brings a vital perspective to our exploration of Albion.
Drawing on her acclaimed book, When We Ruled: The Rise and Fall of Twelve African Queens and Warriors, Paula discusses the power of restoring overlooked narratives to the center of our global and national stories. Together, they examine how history shapes the idea of who gets to be seen as "English" and the intersections of race, memory, and belonging.
Josephine Burton takes us inside the rehearsal room of Our Public House, Dash Arts' new touring theatre production and the culmination of our series of work on Albion.
We join the company during their rehearsals at Toynbee Studios while some of the country heads to the polls in local elections. Assistant Director Scott Hurran shares insights into the collective creation of characters and how communities across the country have shaped the play's development.
Set in a pub, Our Public House is a play about Englishness: who we are, what we've lost, and what we might still become.
What does Englishness sound like?
In this episode of OffScript, Dash Arts' Artistic Director Josephine Burton is joined by musician, songwriter, and activist Billy Bragg for an electric conversation about England - its flags, its contradictions, and its capacity for protest.
What makes someone English — and who gets to decide?
In this episode of Off Script, Dash Arts' Artistic Director Josephine Burton is joined by choreographer Shobana Jeyasingh, born in India, raised in Sri Lanka and Malaysia, and educated in the UK, whose internationalism has always been at the heart of her practice.
What does Englishness mean to you?
In this episode of OffScript, Dash Arts’ Artistic Director Josephine Burton is joined by journalist, writer, and Editor-in-Chief of Byline Times, Hardeep Matharu, for a wide-ranging conversation about the complex and overlooked stories shaping contemporary England. Drawing on her work leading an independent, reader-funded news outlet committed to investigative journalism and democratic accountability, Hardeep brings a sharp perspective on the narratives that dominate public life — and those that are too often ignored.
In this episode of OffScript, Dash Arts' Artistic Director Josephine Burton takes us inside the rehearsal room and into the pub, as she introduces the people and ideas behind Our Public House, Dash Arts' new touring theatre production and the culmination of the Albion series.
In this episode of OffScript, Dash Arts' Artistic Director Josephine Burton is joined by Jeremy Deller for a wide-ranging conversation about how art uncovers the contradictions, radical traditions, and hidden stories that shape contemporary England.
Welcome to Albion — our exploration of what it means to be English, and what we mean by England.
In this episode of OffScript, Dash Arts’ Artistic Director Josephine Burton is joined by Caroline Lucas for a thoughtful and urgent conversation about Englishness — beyond flags and nostalgia.
In this special episode Artistic Director, Josephine Burton, catches up with four former speech-making workshop participants across the country on how they are experiencing the election campaign, and analyses our political candidates and the quality of their speechmaking with Alan Finlayson, Professor of Political and Social Theory at the University of East Anglia, and collaborator on our national workshops.
Whilst the country builds up to a general election, we’re in the midst of creating Our Public House, Dash Arts’ state-of-the-nation theatre production. Hear from Artistic Director Josephine Burton and playwright Barney Norris on how our play weaves together the ideas and speeches of over 150 voices from across England and the ever shifting political landscape.
In the still of a spring night, we journey into the woods with musicians Sam Lee and Jack Durtnall to hear the beautiful and increasingly rare song of the nightingale with a concert and conversation around the campfire.
Marie and Josephine chat outside a pub in South London after a week of development and rehearsals at the NTS - intercut with clips from the rehearsal room and questions from the audience
“Grasp the subject, the words will follow.” Attributed to Cato The Elder
“Take a deep breath in, now think about the future you want” Heidi in Cornwall.
What do you want to change? What do you want politicians to understand?
Join us on the road as we travel the length and breadth of England to hear what people want to change. In communities across Cornwall, Yorkshire, Norfolk, the North West, South East and the Midlands, we’re supporting people to write and deliver speeches on what difference they want to see.
Welcome to Albion. A world with a legendary past, fallen present and hope-filled future. Our Artistic Director Josephine Burton and Podcast Producer Rachael Head discover the myths of Albion and what it means to be English today.
In the third and final episode of Making Middlemarch, the cast and crew reflect on their experience of The Great Middlemarch Mystery.
The second episode of Making Middlemarch brings you conversations straight from the rehearsal room.
Discover how the idea of The Great Middlemarch Mystery was conceived and why the source text’s author, George Eliot, continues to enchant us today.
albion features in our BLOG
Our new film delves into the making of ‘The Great Middlemarch Mystery,’ an immersive retelling of George Eliot’s much-loved novel.
We’re proud to be taking part in this year’s Big Give Christmas Challenge 2022 again this year! With your help all donations made via The Big Give website between Tuesday 29 November and Tuesday 6 December will be DOUBLED!
Siena Tone, Dash Arts’ Intern and Design and Costume Assistant for The Great Middlemarch Mystery shares her experience learning and working on a very different sort of production.
We spoke with assistant director of The Great Middlemarch Mystery, Connor Alexander, about the challenges and rewards of working on such an ambitious project.
Josephine Burton shares her highlights from directing The Great Middlemarch Mystery immersive theatre.
In the run up to our production of The Great Middlemarch Mystery in April, we spoke with co-writer Professor Ruth Livesey about what it’s been like to adapt such a well-known classic into an immersive theatre script.
We caught up with our producer about the first community workshop for The Great Middlemarch Mystery, and how these workshops will inform the show's opening this April.
Do you work with culturally and socially diverse communities in Coventry or the West Midlands? We’d love to invite your community group to be part of our 2022 immersive theatre experience,The Great Middlemarch Mystery.
Find out more about the Nobel Prize winning author ahead of EUROPEANS: GÜNTER GRASS at Rich Mix on Weds 26 Feb, where we’ll be joined by Kneehigh Theatre and the Berliner Ensemble to discuss their productions of The Tin Drum.
Whether you’re an Eliot fan or a newcomer to her work, we’ve compiled some lesser-known facts about this fascinating and iconic writer.
Join Dash Arts at the Freud Museum in London as we delve into “Leonora Carrington: The Symptomatic Surreal.” Curator Vanessa Boni guides us through Carrington’s turbulent early years—from her life with Max Ernst in France to her wartime breakdown and confinement in a Spanish sanatorium.
We explore the haunting "Villa Pilar" and sketchbooks born from crisis, linking Carrington’s mythic imagery to Freud’s own underworld motifs. This episode uncovers the alchemical threads connecting two 20th-century icons in the very room where Freud once slept.