Tribe Arts

Founded in 2014, Tribe Arts is a theatre and media production company based in Bradford and Leeds. The company has its origins in 2013, sparked by the founders’ frustrations with the limited opportunities for actors of colour and the stereotyped representations they encountered.

With Tribe, they sought to create a new platform for a collective that challenged the status quo. These ideas further solidified through the group’s participation in Improbable’s ‘Devoted and Disgruntled’ event, which focused on issues of race, diversity and inclusion in British theatre. In January 2015 Tribe Arts was commissioned to create a new music-focused piece of work to test the boundaries of musical theatre. A partnership with Leeds Playhouse and the Musical Theatre Network, this resulted in The Tribe Chant, which they workshopped and then further developed with poet Lemn Sissay.

In May 2015, as part of the Bradford Literature Festival, they developed their own format of participatory, radical theatre in a show called Tribe Talks as a way of exploring empire, colonialism and its impact. The next commission was #tribeshakespeare400 (May 2016). The organization restructured in 2016, with Tajpal and Samran Rathore taking on the role of joint artistic directors. In November 2017 the company produced Sid Akbar Ali’s play Nikah, which toured as a workshop to Bradford and London. In 2018 the company produced a performance event to celebrate workers of South Asian and Caribbean heritage in the National Health Service.

The company’s activities were severely hampered by the Covid-19 pandemic, but it launched the magazine Off/Stage to promote Black British and South Asian theatre and culture. Beyond work for theatre and film, the company also offers consultancy and training workshops around diversity, anti-racism and decolonial artistic practices.