A Short History of Shontal

Doug Cowx - Director.

In January 2006 I decided to start my project, ‘ Financial Literacy using Live Theatre ‘ for a number of reasons.

I was convinced that more work needed to be done on debt prevention and I also wanted to enjoy what I was doing again.

With Live Theatre, working with actors, we can look at the issues surrounding people and debt, whilst being entertained, I have been told by those in education, that they know Live Theatre works and is something students never forget.

The challenge was to make it viable, look at the costs and the challenges of getting it into community groups and schools and making it affordable, so that all our hard work would continue into the future.

I have been very lucky. Initially the UnLtd charity gave me enough money to put on our first performances, and then from those people who came along, we were fortunate enough to be passed onto Barclays Bank plc, who have funded us to deliver the project to over 40 groups across the North East, in December 2008 Barclays very kindly extended their funding for us, to cover those groups working with 16 - 25 year olds.

After 11 years working in the free advice sector as a specialist debt advisor I was able to take on about 100 new clients each year, between May 2008 to July 2009, the theatre part of our group performed over 100 times to over 4,000 people.

We are a Community Interest Company, Limited by guarantee, and I am now extremely fortunate to have the help and support of my fellow directors, the actor Peter Ross and our Company Secretary Bev Larman, which means we can hopefully take the project to the next stage.

Thank you for your interest.