Christina Ford was selected through an open call to Barking & Dagenham for a locally based artist. For over four months during spring 2017, Christina built a new community network made up of over twenty local families. Christina has facilitated regular social activities for the group with sessions such as arts and crafts, cooking healthy on a budget and family drama workshops; providing a safe, supportive, flexible space for local single parents and their children. This was set up under the umbrella of the charity Gingerbread who campaign for and on behalf of single parent families.

These sessions allowed Christina to gather stories and testimonials from the parents and children to inform her performance piece. Inspired by verbatim and political theatre, the performance aims to echo their voices that often go unheard. Christina found that the lives and experiences of the mothers she worked with were quite varied but the main commonality was their challenges when looking for and entering employment.

Another Single Mother starred a number of mothers and children from the group. Audiences were guided through the house and bear witness to the frantic, exacerbating, comical trials and tribulations of being a single mother. Christina aimed to use this as an opportunity to gain feedback on the work, which she will continue to develop with the families, and tour to other venues.

Another Single Mother was performed at The White House on Thurs 1st and Fri 2nd of June 2017.

The Gingerbread Dagenham group continues to meet to this day. They engage in a series of workshops, developed in consultation with Christina and the council on healthy eating and fitness.

Supported by London Borough of Barking & Dagenham, Arts Council England, Paul Hamlyn Foundation, Heritage Lottery Fund, Genesis Foundation and the Foyle Foundation.