Leaving Company Three: telling people

Antione, Pia and me at my last residential

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been telling people that I’ve decided to leave Company Three.

There’s an order to telling people. I start with my closest colleagues - Nuna, our Associate Artistic Director, and Katie, our Executive Director. They knew it was something I was thinking about, because we’ve talked about it a lot over the last six months or so, but making it real is something different.

I tell our board. Again, they’re waiting for it. I speak to them personally, send an email, clear an hour in a board meeting to talk through the logistics and plan. I feel clear, confident in my decision. They are supportive. The best question: “What do you need from us?” There are moments boards usefully feel slightly removed from the company - but this is a time when I need to feel like you’re right in it with us, holding the transition.

After that, a list, of people to tell, in the right order. The core staff. The young people. Key freelancers. Funders. Partners. Former members. People we’ve worked with on the way. Individual supporters.

Our associates Gavin and Amber come back after some time away and I have to rush to tell them in time. No gentle lead in. They’re both surprised, but so supportive.

When I tell the young people it feels most real. Sitting in a room with 45 of them; fifteen minutes at the end of the day. I realise in that moment that the thing I’m giving up is the opportunity to hang out with teenagers on a regular basis, to chat with them and know about their lives. It’s the thing that makes me cry and feel the first real regret.

But I’ve started now. It feels like that cheese they roll down the hill - I suddenly want to charge after it, recklessly. But it’s rolling now. Our three rules at Company Three are Be Kind, Be Brave and Be Yourself. Be Brave, I say to myself.

I text the C3 members who weren’t there that day, to tell them. I don’t text our very newest members - our Year 6 and 7s, because they haven’t even met me yet. They will start their C3 journey not knowing who I am.

The whole team and all our young people go off to residential. I stay at home. Deliberately because I think it’s good for the team to do it without me, but also because it’s the summer holidays and I have two small children. I go for two days, later in the week. They’re pleased to see me, but I’m a bonus, not an essential part of the project. The young people perform at an open mic night and it descends (as ascends?) into a small rave - everyone dancing. Nuna DJs, playing songs I would never put on.

Antoine and Pia are on the residential as night time support staff. They’ve been at C3 for almost as long as I have. I still remember Antione on the edge of a workshop I ran to find new members at Highbury Grove School. “Are you joining in?” I asked. “I’m here because I’ve got detention” he said. “If you’re in the room you’re joining in” - and he did, and he has, and now he and Pia and I are walking to the beach planning a sketch for the young people, and they are adults like me, just friends really, walking and talking.

I tell funders carefully. Reassuring them. A line emerges which feels true. That I’m leaving Company Three in the best possible condition for someone to come and thrive in my role. It reassures me too. I stop chasing the cheese.

I draft a blog to put on the C3 website. The trustees read it and comment.

I write a press release about myself, because C3 is still too small to have a marketing person.

I pull together lists of artists, friends, partners - people who’ve worked with us on the way. Afra Bell, a local counsellor who worked with me right at the very beginning - supporting young people emotionally. Lu Kemp, who wrote a report after I fell apart making a play, putting too much pressure on myself. People we’re working with now; people I haven’t seen for a decade or more.

There are a hundreds of people. I try and message them all.

We have a team meeting about the year ahead and it feels like repetition. The same conversations about scheduling and groups that I’ve been having for 15 years. There’s not so much new for me here.

And then today. The last chance to stop the cheese rolling. A blog on the website. Social media posts. Suddenly I split into two - the AD of C3, seeing out my time, and Ned - someone separate from the company.

The cheese bounces away and I watch it go. It feels like grief, but the right kind. The start of something, as well as the end. Be Brave, I say to myself. Be Brave.