Looking back on 2025 at Mafwa Theatre
Every year we find ourselves saying it’s been our biggest year yet and 2025 was no different.
Across the year, our weekly groups continued to be places people came back to. Not just once, but week after week. More people than ever took part in our work. Our groups grew quickly in size and confidence, and creative programmes shifted as new people joined, returned, and helped shape our output.
What made this growth possible wasn’t necessarily a single moment or event, but repetition and trust. People showing up, bringing a new friend with them. and helping our spaces feel familiar, shared, and worth returning to.
Kuluhenna Drama, our weekly women’s drama group, now regularly welcomes around 30 women. New people continue to find the group through word of mouth, as participants invite others into something that’s become part of their weekly rhythm.
Over time, confidence and collective strength has grown too, with participants leading warm-ups, supporting newcomers, and shaping how sessions run. The group has become not just somewhere to attend, but something people feel part of and invested in.
One of last year’s highlights was creating and performing a new piece for Refugee Week, responding to the theme Community as a Superpower. Using movement, music and spoken word, participants shared the work with over 250 people at our Family Flourish Day. For many, it was their first time performing publicly and was an experience people continued to talk about long after the day itself.
“The weather is invisible when we are here.”
2025 year marked three years of the Lincoln Greeners! What began as a small weekly gardening session has grown into a space people return to week after week.
Over the past year, attendance has tripled, with neighbours often bringing someone else along - a friend, a family member, someone they think might enjoy being there. Together, people have grown food, shared skills, swapped recipes and connected gardening to memories of home and tradition.
The garden continued to respond to the people using it and we were excited to launch our micro-allotments and a small veg library, opening up new ways to grow and share food locally.
In the autumn, the Lincoln Greeners were recognised with Environmental Achievement of the Year at the Leeds Compassionate City Awards! A wonderful acknowledgement of the steady, collective work happening each week in the garden.
“I feel very comfortable and happy here.”
Across the warmer months, our Garden Gremlins sessions brought families into the garden to play, explore and create plenty of chaos together. Over the last year these sessions have shifted in response to what local families enjoy, allowing the programme to grow alongside the people using it.
When autumn arrived, we ran Art Club with Space2, a series of slower, nature-based creative mornings. Leaves, petals and found materials became prints and collages. Artwork was hung outside to dry. Neighbours stopped to look and admire. It was a reminder that familiar faces, shared spaces and time to try things out without pressure can make creativity feel possible for more people.
Art Club will be returning in 2026.
Refugee Week is never just one week for us, but it often brings things into focus.
In 2025 we welcomed over 600 children and families to the Playbox, and more than 250 people gathered in Roxby Community Garden for our Family Flourish Day. There was play, performance, music and movement. Set against a summer in which anti-migrant rhetoric once again rose to the surface, the importance of this work was hard to ignore. Acts of care, creativity and togetherness aren’t symbolic gestures; they’re practical, everyday ways of building connection and standing against fear and division. One gathering, one conversation and one shared experience at a time.
2025 brought some important changes within the Mafwa team.
We welcomed Danmore as Green Engagement Lead and Rosie as our first-ever General Manager. Both joined during a period of rapid growth and have brought steadiness, insight and new ways of thinking to how we work day to day. In the spring, Tamsin returned from maternity leave, resuming her role as Co-Artistic Director and continuing to shape Mafwa’s creative direction.
We said goodbye to Matilya, who led Lincoln Greeners from its earliest days and helped turn a small patch of land into the thriving garden it is today, laying foundations that continue to shape the space. Earlier in the year, Anthony also stepped back from the role of Chair after years of guidance and support during an important period in Mafwa’s development.
Alongside the staff team, we want to recognise the work of our volunteers, who supported sessions, events, trips, workshops and outreach across the year. They showed up with warmth, good humour and a willingness to get stuck in wherever needed. Their presence makes this work possible.
We’re also deeply grateful to our board, whose thoughtful oversight and steady guidance helped steer Mafwa through a year of growth and change.
Looking ahead
Plans are already taking shape for what comes next, including our biggest Refugee Week celebration yet in 2026, alongside the continuation of weekly groups, creative sessions and ongoing work in Roxby Community Garden.
Thank you to everyone who spent time with Mafwa in 2025, in whatever way that looked like.
We’re looking forward to what’s next and to continuing this work together.