East Midlands: Current Context
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By Jayne Quantrill,
Arts Council England (East Midlands): Assistant Officer, Theatre and Music and Regional Champion.
While the East Midlands has not traditionally been seen as a focal point for outdoor performance, over the last few years there have been a few events and initiatives that have aimed to change that perspective,
Street Petite a three-year programme sought to bring high quality Street Theatre to Derbyshire through the delivery of an annual programme of free accessible, non venue-based Street Theatre.
The THREE Cities Create and Connect project received £800,000 in funding from the Millennium Commission and Arts Council England through the Urban Cultural Programme. Impacting on the quality, range and number of outdoor performances in Leicester, Derby & Nottingham between 2005 and 2006.
Leicester Comedy Festival – On cold and wintery night in February 2007 the French Street arts Company Plasticiens Volants brought their enchanting show “Perle” to the community of Braunstone in Leicester-extraordinary flying inflatable creatures invaded the heavens, streets with the finale in the local park
BJC 07 (British juggling Convention) in Nottingham –The BJC is one of the main events on the country’s contemporary circus calendar - It also featured outdoor street performances in and around the re-vamped Old Market Square
Local Authorities are essential partners in the development of street arts, in many cases driving much of the activity within this sector and that is true here in the East Midlands
Nottinghamshire County Council promoted the incredible “Sticky” (which The Stage described as “quite simply the most awesome and joyous piece I have ever seen in my life”) at Rufford Country Park.
For several years until the mid-1990’s, Newark on Water festival, managed by Newark and Sherwood District Council, saw major performances by companies including Walk the Plank, thanks to an Arts Council England funded consortium between NSDC, De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-sea and other UK producers.
While other East Midlands events have demonstrated a commitment to programming outdoor performance:
Nottingham City Councils’ annual three day Riverside Festival during the first weekend of August on the banks of the River Trent
Loughborough’s Streets Alive –Loughborough’s town centre animated through the use of Street performers
Leicester Comedy Festival - Emergency Exit Arts -Runga Rung’ Performance commissioned as part of their 10th birthday and have commissioned other large scale performances at either the launch or finale of the Comedy Festival in other years.
Arts Council East Midlands commitment to outdoor performance has helped regional artists to develop new work and supported regional festivals to attract people to outdoor arts events and brought the wonder of outdoor arts to the wider public
There is still a fair way to go before the East Midlands can boast the infrastructure of other regions, but there are some jewels in the crown both established and emerging - some of those Regional Artists, Companies and Festivals involved in outdoor work are as follows: (Full details are available here)
Artizani
Art Fresco
Ashbourne Streetfest
Babbling Vagabonds
Derby Feste
Hanby and Barrett
Metro-Boulot-Dodo
Shifting Sands Theatre
And further exciting developments are still to come…Watch this space for the new “SO” festival. East Lindsey District Council and Arts Council England are at the planning stage of developing a major regular festival for Skegness on the East Coast of Lincolnshire which aims to include outdoor performances – street Theatre & large scale processions, as one of 3 planned strands of activity for the event. So2009 will be staged as a single days worth of activity on July 25th acting as a taster for the full festival event starting in 2010 (So2010) and occurring as a biennale thereafter.
An extended version of this overview is available in pdf format here.
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