Ben Walden - Artistic Director

Ben’s work with Contender Charlie has received major acclaim at Heads and Deputies Conferences across the country.

He is an actor and presenter who has played a number of leading roles on television and for the Donmar and Almeida theatre companies as well as at Shakespeare`s Globe.

Having run many masterclasses for the Shakespeare`s Globe Education Centre he has worked in close collaboration with Mark Rylance and Richard Olivier in the development of an experiential theatre learning technique called Mythodrama.

As an Senior Associate at Olivier Mythodrama, Ben is now running sessions bringing this work at Leadership level into a broad range of organisations across the world. He has also run projects at a number of leading business schools including Columbia, OSBS, the London Business School and Insead.

"Contender Charlie" is the company he has formed to take this, and other theatre techniques,  into education.

Its courses have now become a regular fixture at Headteacher conferences as well as at staff and student events all over Britain.

He is a father of four children and, aside from his family, Ben`s chief passion is using theatre as a medium to bring meaning, purpose and greater personal expression to the lives of young people.