Here are a number of recommendations arising from speakers and discussions at the Elemental events.
Venues
Regional champions could send out a questionnaire to each venue in their region to assess whether that venue has an adequate knowledge of its building fabric and suitability for rigging points. This might flag up new spaces for circus-style work.
Marketing
Use advocates such as Lyn Gardner to encourage critics (in her words) “to be enablers of the new rather than gatekeepers of established cultural norms.” This could be a campaign by PR agencies prominent in the arts or a series of lunches for theatre critics at which their role is debated and discussed.
Train theatre critics in the vocabulary and language of Street and Circus performance. Look to replicate the young critic’s initiative currently run by Circus Arts Forum in other regions and sectors. Encourage attendance by a theatre critic to the Circostrada critics training, if it is run again.
Create training or a short seminar to create or share best practice in viral marketing techniques that can harness the interest in Street Arts and those taking photographs on mobiles and translate that interest into audience building. (This may be a suitable project for an audience development agency such as Audiences London as we are not aware of work currently carried out in this area.)
Replicate City Circ in other regions: City Circ is a new network of inner and outer London venues, and ‘alliance’ for contemporary Circus Arts in London. This could include a ‘curated’ season to firmly establish circus in theatres across a given region and allow marketing economies of scale for print and PR.
Work which will tour to other venues is more likely to get a review from a national newspaper as they can flag up later performances: PR agents and companies doing their own PR need to understand the requirements of national titles to provide them with information in order to maximise their chances of obtaining coverage.
Creation Spaces
Identifying hotels which are closely located to creation spaces and negotiate special deals for large groups and long term bookings.
Grants for Arts
Improve awareness within Arts Council at a regional level of the constraints of creating circus work. Any work with new equipment requires a number of weeks to master the rig before contemplating creating work. This translates into longer rehearsal times and relatively larger budgets when compared with theatre counterparts.
Consider the need for theatre specialists, such as dramaturges and directors in addition to circus and performance specialists in production teams. This will again make projects relatively more expensive and Grants for Arts assessors may need to be aware of this.
Encourage partnerships with local universities to add robust methodology to project evaluation. The new Street Art degree programmes (e.g. at Winchester) could be useful sources of collaboration for this.
Commissioning
A role for a central or brokered approach to commissioning - based perhaps on the Without Walls model - where a group of local authorities from diverse regions can collaborate to commission a large-scale outdoor piece of work which has a legacy or tour built in at the outset.
Create advocacy opportunities for ISAN, CAF, and NASA representatives to speak at important local government conferences and start a dialogue with local governments and encourage alliances that might commission large scale work.
Create a practical checklist for commissioners that covers key areas of risk, contractual requirements, a standard brief for bespoke commissions based on models of best practice from around the country or internationally.
Ensure transparency of available funding when advertising or seeking new commissions so that the level of available money is clear and people can tender realistically.
Create, in each region, a sustainable (possibly informal) network for local artists, producers and commissioners who can discuss and recommend ways to build investment in skills and infrastructure.
Develop a useful forum for the signposting of opportunities for emerging and existing artists and organisations: this could be online.
Create professional development for Local Authority Arts Officers to aid their progress from funder/buyer to commissioner. Again, this might be useful on a nationwide basis through collaboration with local government organisations.
2012
Ensure that there is an opportunity for international exchange and skills transfer where working with international companies on any large scale street and circus projects in connection with 2012 initiatives.
Promote the natural affinity between sport and the athleticism and discipline required in creating circus work and building circus skills. This could be emphasised by inviting all the region’s 2012 programmers to a Circus or Youth Circus event or festival and instigating conversation there.
There is no flying trapeze rig in a building in England: could there be a conversation with the ODA to see if, while building sports facilities for 2012, one or two buildings could include the rigging for a flying trapeze (two free-swinging trapezes) in a suitably large space. This would enable world-class circus skills to be developed.
Partnerships
Encourage companies or groups of companies in the same region to set up partnerships and alliances of widest possible nature: local authorities, government bodies, police, private sector and public sector, arts and education. This process is based on LIFT’s Business Arts Forum, described in “Changing the Performance” by Julia Rowntree.
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