ARTIST DEVELOPMENT
HOPE SHOWS
Each week in the Calais Jungle and later in Domes across Paris, London, Coventry, Sheffield and beyond, Good Chance staged weekly Hope Shows co-created with the camp residents. These community-conceived variety performances showcased the musical, dramatic and writing talents of the local community of refugees and asylum-seekers and celebrated their own unique cultural traditions with audiences of their peers and the public.
The Hope Shows offered a space for people to come together and dream of a shared future.
In 2025 we relaunched this founding project as a new programme of trauma-informed creative workshops for people with lived experience of displacement in asylum hotels and community centres across the UK. These processes each culminate in a new Hope Show, starting with The Wish Tree.
With each Hope Show, we want to bring people together who would not normally meet, amplify hope and the importance of community, and share incredible new artists and their stories with a wider general public to help shift the narrative.
“I found friends at Good Chance, who made me feel like a human being. They made me feel that there is still humanity in the world and a chance for life. People used to ask me what I was looking for when I fled my homeland. I am just looking for dignity, peace, happiness and humanity. I just want to live like everybody else in this world.” - Mohammed from Sudan, Good Chance Paris in an Interview with NOWNESS
“The Hope Show was spectacular – one of the most inspiring and touching things I ever saw. I will never forget that joy and exaltation both on stage and in the crowd. I really got to see how transformative the power of art could be and how deeply meaningful these windows of Hope and infinite possibilities were for the migrants. Even if those are small windows.” - Audience member, Hope Show Paris
We are deeply grateful to the following for their support towards Good Chance's Hope Shows programme: Stanley Thomas Johnson Foundation, Crucible Foundation, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, Porticus, and Alexander Leff
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Our Story
In the summer of 2015, two British playwrights visited the Calais ‘Jungle’ refugee camp. There they found a spontaneous international community on our doorstep, thousands of people from over 25 countries living side-by-side, struggling for survival, waiting for their “good chance” to reach the UK.
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Theatre of Sanctuary
What started in a small tent in the muddy fields of Calais has grown into a global movement of hope and humanity. Since then we have co-created our award-winning play The Jungle, the giant public artwork The Walk with Little Amal, and the world’s largest international kite-flying festival to celebrate Afghan culture, Fly With Me, with over 5,000 artists from sanctuary-seeking backgrounds to encourage a culture of welcome, solidarity and compassion.