About Us
Established in 2014, Cat & Hutch is a passion project born out of our love for reading and performing. Our journey began with 'The Velveteen Rabbit,' a debut at Hammersmith & Fulham ArtsFest, generously supported by Specsavers Fulham.
Since those early days, our story has unfolded across diverse venues -theatres, libraries, education settings and festivals. We create interactive shows and workshops, tailored for children aged 0-11, drawing inspiration from timeless and new literature. This includes touring libraries for The Summer Reading Challenge every year, partnering with Bigfoot Arts to create and deliver STEM shows and collaborating with Lantana publishing, adapting their books into shows and workshops.
Previous collaborations include The Bright Agency where we ran bi weekly workshops at their Bright Emporium, The Barbican Centre where we performed shows at the Walthamstow Garden Party and City and Country Farmer's markets.
At the heart of Cat & Hutch is a belief that there's a perfect book for everyone. Beyond sparking creativity, reading enhances communication and social skills. Most importantly, we want children to embark on the joyous adventure of reading.
Our Story
How Cat & Hutch was created...
We first met in 2011 at the Homegrown sessions at Battersea Arts Centre and went onto perform with The Roundhouse at Bestival in 2012 where we played a Mother/daughter duo.
In 2013 we were hired as producers for a production on Richard Brinsley Sheridan's " The Rivals" and asked to create a family treasure hunt alongside the show. It was after this event that we realised our mutual adoration for working with children and decided to set up our own company.
Having worked in childcare and the education sector we had encountered children who couldn't find the fun in reading. We wanted to change this and so decided to specialise in adapting children's literature into fun, interactive performances and workshops with the aim to encourage children to read the literature we deliver.
After deliberating over what we should call ourselves, we realised our own nicknames could be used to create characters that children could really engage with. And so the characters of Cat and Hutch were born and we launched the company in 2014, with our first production of "The Velveteen Rabbit" which was kindly sponsored by Specsavers.