About Us - Highly Sprung Performance

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Enabling better
futures for children
and young people
through unforgettable
physical theatre.

Our Methodology

our values

Our Youth Board

Our team

Our Board

What We Do

Highly Sprung create inspiring performances and experiences using physical theatre.

We tell compelling and relevant stories using physical theatre where text moves and movement speaks. Our work with and for children and young people produces bold, spectacular performances and unforgettable experiences, in unexpected ways, spaces, and places to inspire change.

Every year Highly Sprung transform the lives of thousands of children and young people. We deliver workshops to more than 5000 children and young people and reach an audience of nearly 40,000 with our touring performances across the UK and the world.

Our work inspires children and young people to discover their talents and grow their voice, laying the foundations for better futures through powerful physical theatre.

Highly Sprung – Sprungsters at Daimler Powerhouse

“Highly Sprung has made the arts accessible to my family. They bring learning to life, and have enabled my children to gain a deep level of understanding about themselves and the world through the process of storytelling, movement, expression, and performance.

Highly Sprung is a place where my children have felt a great sense of belonging, free to express themselves. When you talk about inclusion, Highly Sprung live and breathe this. When you talk about community, Highly Sprung brings everybody together.”

“Our work exists to empower, amplify and elevate children and voung people’s voices using the Highly Sprung method and approach to physical theatre, with this strategy we want to ensure we are constructing respected platforms for people to trulv hear them.”

Sarah Worth, Co-Founder and Executive Director

“Our work is changing how people view work produced with and for children and young people. It’s about giving young people the chance to develop their voice through physical theatre, and then making sure there’s a place for them to be heard and seen in a way which is respected and valued as part of today’s arts ecology.”

Mark Worth, Co-Founder and Artistic Director

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“Children really engaged with the show and wanted to join!”
Grow

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Our Methodology

Children and Young People are central to Highly Sprung’s Methodology. We exist to make work with and for them, creating exciting and bespoke participatory experiences and performances for them to engage as audiences, participants, performers, and creators.

Highly Sprung’s work creates community, encourages learning and understanding through doing, and creates safe spaces where children and young people feel seen and celebrated. Our approach relies on the use of physical engagement that goes beyond spoken language. Spoken text is limited, to enable the body to tell the story and our audience’s to listen.

Key to our work is telling stories. We know that stories can change the world, and we use stories to evoke change. To demonstrate the power of the human spirit. We inspire young people to learn through fun, motivation and engagement which feels important and relevant – especially as it is inspired and often designed by them. Spoken text is limited, to enable the body to tell the story and our audience’s to listen.

We celebrate and make space for the physicality of each person, knowing they bring with them their own thoughts, feelings, and perspectives. We are not afraid to work with young people to explore important questions. Working together to make the complicated accessible, through story-telling and movement.

Physical Theatre is vital for young people to make sense of the world and the complex situations they find themselves living through. We are committed to establishing routes for young people to experience and participate in the arts. This happens in a way which amplifies their agency, which improves and transform their lives.

Safeguarding Policy

Highly Sprung is strongly committed to promoting the welfare of children, and the charity’s activities are also in accordance with best practice in safeguarding. You can view our safeguarding statement and policy on our website.

Safeguarding policy

Our Values

Playful

We are serious about play. We know that learning happens through play and that play provides the possibility of new ideas. We ensure our way of working creates safe spaces to imagine, explore, and discover.

Welcoming

To us inclusivity means we see the individual in everything we do. We are always open to new ideas and new ways. Our way of working is accessible, meeting you where you are. We care.

Pioneering

We disrupt the everyday to facilitate and provoke positive change. We embrace challenging questions and problems. We know that sometimes it won’t work but that its still worth the effort. How children and young people are affected by the world’s biggest issues drives us to know more, to find different and new perspectives. We seek out potential and invest in its growth.

Bold

We are always ambitious about what can be achieved with and for children and young people. Our work extends beyond perceived limitations, implementing new approaches and challenging convention. We see the power of children and young people and this inspires us and motivates us to work with them to harness it. We bring about positive change that can be big or small but is always lasting.

Our Youth Advisory Board

Our Youth Advisory Board is a brilliant group of young people aged 14-25. We meet with the Youth Advisory Board 4 times a year, to hear their opinions, insights and expertise, and to help shape our work. Young people’s voice is crucial to our work, and so having that right at the centre is essential.

Youth Advisory Board 2025 – 2026

Alysha

Cate

Eden

Emma

Faye

Florence

Kian

Larah

Libby

Lily

Lily-Rose

Lottie

Lucy

Nell

Rosa

Victoria

Zara

Zoe

What does the Youth Advisory Board mean to you?

“I found myself being able to speak in meetings. The leaders make it
that type of room every time.”

SEBBIE, Former Chair of the YAB

“You’re not just told ‘you’re just a teenager, it doesn’t matter’.”

LUCY, YAB Member

“Being able to make decisions, then seeing them being actioned and
having an impact.”

PAUL, Former YAB Member

“Seeing Highly Sprung’s work from a different perspective what it entails, taking you behind the scenes of all the work that goes on.”

NELL, YAB Member

Our Team

Sarah Worth

As Highly Sprung’s Co-Founder and Executive Director, Sarah spearheads both the strategic and artistic elements of the charity’s work.

Executive Director

Mark Worth

As Co-Founder and Artistic Director of Highly Sprung, Mark Worth is an experienced director, physical theatre practitioner, performer and writer.

Artistic Director

Zoe Drinkwater

Highly Sprung’s Governance & Charity Administrator, Zoe ensures high standards of governance and charity operation are maintained by the Charity.

Governance & Charity Administrator

Emily Robertson

Emily works for Highly Sprung as a key member of the delivery team, working across both educational and performance projects.

Associate Artist and Schools Development Co-Ordinator

Cheryl Revill

As Highly Sprung's General Administrator, Cheryl is a key player, ensuring the smooth, ongoing administration and management of Highly Sprung's programmes.

General Administrator

Our Board

Chair: Simon Goldhill

Alongside a career as a solicitor and then business creator in the UK legal market, Simon served on and then chaired a number of charity boards. He brings considerable expertise in successfully leading organisations through periods of transition and growth.

Ros Adams

Ros is currently the Director of Funding and Partnerships for Geese Theatre Company, after finding her niche in arts fundraising back in 2008. Passionate about co-creation and the power of the arts to change lives, Ros is also the proud mum of a Sprungster.

Emma Gibbons

Emma has worked in Dance and Theatre for over 15 years leading engagement programmes with schools and communities. As former Placemaking Projects Manager for the Royal Shakespeare Company, she has a proven track record of managing complex, multi-stakeholder cultural projects, focusing on place-based infrastructure to improve access to cultural experiences. Currently Head of Client Development for You. Smart. Thing, the leading travel demand management platform for destinations, venues, and live events, she helps clients enhance visitor experience, boost revenue, and reduce the carbon footprint of audience travel. A school governor for three years, she is passionate about developing systems that drive positive change.

Siân Lewis

Siân is a grassroots organiser, activist, and philanthropist. She has worked as a community organiser in Coventry for the last five years and moved into philanthropy after joining the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation in 2024. More importantly however, she was a member of Highly Sprung youth from the ages of 4 – 18, and she is excited to be the first (but certainly not the last!) Sprung to join Highly Sprung’s Board. Siân will be focusing her energy on working with the Youth Board to develop and shape their own ambitions for Highly Sprung, as well as supporting Highly Sprung to build its narrative and national profile as an organisation that has been leading the way in co-creation with young people for over 20 years. Siân is an avid supporter of the arts and in her spare time works as a musician and song-writer in Reign The Girlband, a band currently working on their first EP and performing regularly in the West Midlands.

Steve McCourt

Steve is a director and theatre maker with a dedication to making work that sparks conversation between young people and their adults. Originally training as a performer, Steve has created work for some of the world’s most celebrated stages including the West End (The Lyric, The Vaudeville), Sydney Opera House, Royal Opera House, National Theatre of Holland, Bregenzer Festspiele and Spoleto Festival. Now, Steve works as the Associate Director of Punchdrunk Enrichment – an immersive theatre company making work for family, school and community settings. Steve is honoured to have joined the board of trustees. He knows first hand the lasting impact of Highly Sprung’s practice — he happens to be married to an ex-Sprungster who proudly carries the professional ethos and approach she was offered at her time with Highly Sprung into her work as a drama teacher.

Carly Mee

Carly has over 20 years experience working in theatre, creative learning and producing roles. Carly is Associate Director at Open Theatre focussing on strategic planning, producing live performance, project and financial management. With a passion for young people and access to the arts, as well as a love for dance and physical theatre, Carly is delighted to support Highly Sprung Performance in her first board trustee position. She is married with 2 daughters, who she loves to watch perform and the family enjoy camping, live music and travel.

Jo Trowsdale

Jo is an educator and researcher, with a particular interest in artmaking as affective, physical and cognitive practices that have curriculum and life-wide value. This includes an interest in STEAM (science, technology, arts, mathematics and engineering) education.

She is currently a Senior Lecturer in Education, Childhood and Professional Studies at Birmingham Newman University. A former drama and English teacher, teacher educator and director of Creative Partnerships (a government initiative to enhance the role of the arts and creativity in UK education), Jo’s practice still involves working directly with schools, teachers, pupils and artists. Jo is a founding trustee of Highly Sprung.

Board Register of Interests

Scheme of Delegation

Conflict of Interest Policy