Our Journey
One Tenth Human was created by artistic director Sarah Punshon, inspired by the year she spent working at the Natural History Museum, collaborating with scientists and museum professionals to create interactive events for family visitors.
Our first project was an epic promenade adventure through the basements of Shoreditch Town Hall, inspired by the neuroscience of learning maths, supported by the Wellcome Trust. Thirty children at a time joined our brilliant cast on an exhilarating journey designed by award-winning creative team Joanna Scotcher and Joshua Pharo, discovering that the only way to save the world from killer robots was to re-programme the main-frame with their own brain cells. We’re Stuck! was produced by China Plate Theatre and toured nationally twice, reaching more than 3,000 audience members.
“Really great children’s theatre” Maddie Costa, Exeunt
Since then we’ve been commissioned by and co-produced with a range of brilliant partners including Lancaster Arts (The Astonishing Vacuum Cleaner Adventure), Big Imaginations (Curious Investigators), Tutti Frutti (The Lightbulb Princess), Polka Theatre, the National Festival of Making (Pipes and Poo), and Lancaster University (So Unfair), among others.
“Clever, empowering, and very funny!”
Emily Armstrong, Z-arts Marketing and Audience Development Manager
We love collaboration and exploration, and have also created several unusual one-offs via special commission.
For the Wellcome Collection we created a one night only whole building extravaganza. Macho? brought together artists, historians, scientists, domestic violence experts, drag kings, comedians, teenagers, and male voice choirs to explore the art, science, beauty, and terrifying vulnerability of masculinity.
We also co-created Fringe First winning solo-and-a-half show Arthur with our Associate Artist Daniel Bye, starring Dan and his own five-month-old son.
“A show that makes connections, as though what you are watching are the artist’s synapses firing live” – Lyn Gardner
In 2020 we were commissioned by Big Imaginations to create our first rural touring show. Two weeks later, Covid hit. Under lockdown, with support from Arts Council England and Big Imaginations partners, we stretched ourselves in new directions, taking our trademark inventiveness and intimate interactivity online. We’re Stuck transferred to Zoom with support from brilliant games designer Nick Murray, and Curious Investigators was born as a Zoom experience from the start. Learning from this project led to our innovative creative education project, Terri and the Time Machine.
“We had such a great time. Toni was utterly fab and captivating”
Kate Craddock, Artistic Director, GIFT, mother of “Investigator Kit”
For Winter 2021 we produced our first ever main-stage Christmas show, reaching more than 8,500 audience members with Cinderella: the AWESOME truth, in co-production with Polka Theatre, Wimbledon. We loved that experience and are currently developing a new Christmas show for young audiences.
Since our formation in 2016, we’ve engaged over 33,000 people live via our performances, workshops, and online events. We’ve engaged over sixty scientists and mathematicians as advisors and activity leads. More than 100,000 people have heard about our work online, via social media, at a conference or in the press. Our work has entertained and delighted – and changed children’s understanding, confidence and ambition.
Find out more about our impact.
Read our latest Annual Report.
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