Palette Works
Palette Works
Art for Community
Palette Works is a nonprofit organization in Kita City, Tokyo. We run year-round theater programs for children and teenagers, create participatory productions with local residents, and bring drama into schools across the Tokyo area.
Theater as a way to learn,
to talk, and to build community
Saying what you actually think, in front of other people. Disagreeing with your peers and still finishing one piece of work together. Theater draws out what classrooms often cannot: the ability to express yourself, to work with others, and to think a problem through to the end.
Kita Theater Lab is our year-round class for children from elementary through high school, taught alongside professional actors. The aim is not to train performers. It is to help a young person grow the roots they need to make their own way.
We also work inside schools — lectures on drama education for elementary and junior high school teachers, and drama-based moral education classes for ninth graders.
Kita City has set out to become a leading city for education. We want drama education to reach more of its children, schools and families.
Local problems are not solved by specialists alone. They need residents who treat the problem as their own. Theater can carry a complicated issue through feeling and story, and open a conversation that crosses generations and backgrounds.
In Sakura Theater Lab, residents research a local issue, write the script and perform it themselves. Every production is followed by a public talk with invited specialists, so the audience can look at the issue from several angles.
The point is not a one-off event. We want the experience of making something together to be the way into a lasting habit of dialogue, in which residents of different ages and backgrounds work on their own city alongside the local government and specialists.
We are building this as a repeatable model of community co-creation through theater in Kita City.
Theater sits at the center of everything we do. From it, our work runs in three directions — education, community and outreach — and each one feeds the others.
We run Kita Theater Lab, a year-round class where children work with professional actors through drama and dance. Our aim is the inner growth of the child rather than the making of performers — the roots that let a young person, from elementary through high school, make their own way forward. We also give lectures on drama for teachers and teach moral education programs in schools.
In Sakura Theater Lab, we plan and run a participatory program in which residents create and perform work about issues in their own city, and then discuss those issues publicly with invited specialists. Themes so far have included flood risk, multicultural coexistence and life in public housing estates.
We travel beyond Kita City — to Bunkyo City, Adachi City and Kawaguchi in Saitama — for workshops in elementary schools, moral education programs for ninth graders, and coaching for junior high and high school drama clubs. Workshops for teachers are part of the same effort: to make drama usable inside ordinary school practice.
The main programs Palette Works plans and operates.
Kita Theater Lab ↗
Elementary class / Junior & senior high class
Its own website is in Japanese only
A year-round class in which children build life skills through drama and dance alongside professional actors. Opened in April 2026, continuing a children's theater class that has run in Kita City since 1998.
Co-hosted with Kita City and the Kita City Cultural Promotion Foundation. Endorsed by the Kita City Board of Education.
Sakura Theater Lab
Participatory workshop and performance
Residents research a local issue through fieldwork, write the script and perform it. Each production is followed by a public talk with invited specialists. Running since 2022.
Themes so far: flood risk, multicultural coexistence, public housing estates.
School outreach & moral education
Drama-based classes and coaching
Visiting workshops in elementary, junior high and high schools; moral education and career-education programs using drama; and long-term coaching of school drama clubs.
Examples: moral education programs at a private junior high school, teacher workshops (elementary and junior high), school arts festivals, junior high and high school drama clubs, nursery schools.
Open Atelier
Open studio for arts experience
An open studio at Kokokita in Toshima, Kita City. We invite artists such as stage designers and open the room for making and trying things — picture-book readings, small performances and workshops. In summer it also becomes a place for children to spend the school holidays.
Where: Studio 3-H, Kokokita / Kokokita Festival.
If you work in drama education — as a teaching artist, teacher or researcher, or with a company or a funder — we would be glad to talk. Visits and observations, exchanges of practice, joint projects and talks are all welcome. We answer in English.
Get in touch →