Clare grew up in Baltimore in a fractured family and luckily found a mentor, Isabel Burger, known to everyone as Dearie. Dearie had founded Baltimore's Children's Theatre Association, and Clare became her assistant. After graduate school in Stanford on the west coast of the USA, Clare came to London and became a film maker before setting up her own Children's Theatre Workshop in Marylebone.

The Children's Theatre Workshop comprised 50% children and 50% adults, mainly trainee teachers at Sidney Webb College, part of the University of London, and the place Clare taught drama and English. The young people themselves came from schools all over London and  many would normally have not had access to the world of theatre and playwriting. It was a huge struggle to keep this very ambitious project afloat, to win the arguments that the college should be open on Saturdays, and to demonstrate that the work was valid. But there was a solid fan base: her students, who often brought their own children to the all-day Saturday school and to residential courses in the countryside. 

Everyone Clare met was a potential collaborator: musicians, artists and writers were forcefully roped into the adventure. She had a constant ally in Ann Syz, her main collaborator and co-organiser. They devised plays into the night, writing scripts for a huge cast of characters, creating parts for everyone. Those of us who grew up in this 1970s London miracle, the Children's Theatre Workshop, were fully aware that we were extraordinarily lucky to be included. 

A few of the artists we worked with: 

Violet Philpott created a culture of making, and we made everything from tiny puppets to unwieldy two-person rod puppets. Once we had breathed life into our creations, we toured plays around barns and village halls in Devon, including memorably in Dartington Hall.

The author Russell Hoban was invited, and inspired a culture of experimental writing. He gathered us in the mornings to draw circles as a meditative practice before launching into our notebooks to write, knowing that we would soon have to share with the group. How exciting that was and how terrifying too!

Toynbee Hall and the Young Vic lent us their stages for Easter shows which ran for four performances, two matinees and two evening shows. These shows were all-out affairs with incredibly ambitious costumes, professional lighting, and original live music. 

We knew that every young person should have the chances we experienced, and it did look as if the benefits of theatre in education were fully understood and spreading in the late 70s and early 80s. But then we fell into a dark age where creativity in education was seen as an indulgence. Sadly this insensitivity to the value of the creative arts has continued right up to the present.

But there is hope yet that the ideals Clare pioneered back in the 60s can continue into the future. Scene & Heard is a unique theatre mentoring project operating in today's Camden with a significant local impact. It is a Centre of Excellence, which means that they support others to develop their own mentoring, playwrighting and theatre initiatives in communities around the world. It is a joy to see Scene & Heard at work post-pandemic making things happen for young people from an underserved community in Somers Town.