Elemental

Taking Risks Successfully - a presentation by Ali Williams from No Fit State Circus at Elemental in the West Midlands.

(Here are some edited snippets from Ali’s notes for the presentation)

NoFit State circus is 23 years old this year. It was started by a group of students with a common interest in juggling, getting stoned, and avoiding having to get grown up jobs when we graduated.

when we started we were not very good! But the important thing was we believed we could be, and as we had never seen contemporary circus we had no reference as to just how truly awful our first shows were! Fortunately neither did our public who appeared to enjoy our work.

In the late eighties we managed to see some companies like Ra Ra Zoo, Mummerandada and Circus Oz and began to have a vision of what new circus could be like!

By 1990, by living off a government training scheme called enterprise allowance that paid us £40 a week to run our own business and by saving everything we earned we had bought our first little big top which we toured in for five years, performing across the UK for local authorities and festivals.

Our motto was if we can’t get bigger and better each year then we will give up and go and get normal jobs.

NoFit State is now a registered charity with an annual turnover of 1.2 million last year. The title of this section is Taking Risks (successfully) which is good because that means its not about taking risks (without having a clue what you’re doing and dealing with dire if not catastrophic consequences . We have quite a lot of experience of that too).

Key risks (No Fit State have taken) can be summarised as:

There are some big challenges for us now:

We want to create new work both for the silver tent and for other environments and contexts. We want to do this with the same creative integrity and freedom with which we created Immortal but we want to do it in less than 10 years and we want to do it at the same time as touring Immortal.

We want to continue to inspire, nurture, develop and support circus peformers at all levels of experience and we want to build a thriving circus community around our new training space in Cardiff.

The risks are now different but no less alarming to manage: Reputation, Profile, Artistic development and innovation, Company well-being as well as Financial. If we’re still here in 10 years time, we’ll let you know how we get on…

And if we’re not we will surely go out with a bang!

To download the presentation above please click here, and for the full notes document, please click here.

For more about the West Midlands event and theme please click here.

On Tuesday 19th May we kicked off the West Midlands event at Playbox Theatre in Warwick with the keynote speaker, Ali Williams from No Fit State and break out sessions with Bill Ferguson and Stewart McGill (find out about them here) and not forgetting Ros Robins from the Arts Council England WM as MC.

Starting with setting the scene exercise, interesting and thoughtful ideas and thinking came from the section and leading nicely into the keynote address from Ali Williams. The address was suitably informal looking at the progression route that No Fit State has taken from “little acorns” to becoming the internationally acclaimed company we see today. Starting with today – and the Tabu video:

Interestingly the development from little acorns to what we see today came from little investment from ACE in the beginning, and a lot of risk as a company! Full presentation and notes will soon be available.

Following a lovely lunch and some fabulous brownies courtesy of Playbox, breakout sessions with Bill Ferguson and Stewart McGill gave examples of how Street and Circus work on ground level and indeed the Playbox’s work nurturing the “Oak Trees” of the future.

Stewart’s presentation included an aerial demonstration by Christina Newman.

At the West Midlands ‘elemental’ we are pleased to be joined by the Guest Speaker Ali Williams from No Fit State Circus, and discover emerging talent with Stewart McGill (Playbox Theatre) and Bill Ferguson (Shrewsbury Festival)

Who is Ali Williams?

After a year of working as a Physio for South Glamorgan Health Authority I gave up my career to form NoFit State Circus and from 1986-1997 I was performer and General Manager for them, with responsibilities for tour planning, fundraising, finance, marketing and general administration. During this time I was also a freelance performer, director and arts administrator and worked with other theatre companies such as Travelling Light Theatre (Bristol), The Public (West Bromwich), Desperate Men (Bristol) in various consultancy roles. In 1993 I set up the community wing of NoFit State and created opportunities for our community performers to work with Welsh National Opera on their large-scale community projects. In 1998 I began to direct circus productions and directed three community circus shows for Oddfellows Playhouse (Connecticut), Circus Eruption (Swansea) and Syrcus Circus (Bangor)

Between 1997-2002 NoFit State created three large-scale community circus projects for which I was community director and we involved over 400 adults and 200 young people from the community in these projects. This was and opportunity for experimentation with artform development. In 2001 I returned to college to study Arts Management, and for my business plan module I created in collaboration with a science advisor a new show called Science Circus, which was funded by NESTA and Science Year to tour around the UK in 2002.

In 2004 I became co-producer of the ImMortal project with Tom Rack which is now an internationally recognised, award winning critically acclaimed production. The development and tour of ImMortal took NoFit State to a new level, being recognised for creative excellence and revolutionary apprenticeship scheme to create a career pathway for community performers.

The success of Immortal enabled the company to expand to employ an Administrator, General Manager and Education Assistant enabling the founders to focus on creative development.

In 2006 I also became part time director of the Circus Arts Forum, the UK umbrella organisation for the Circus Arts. My role in this organisation is advocacy and strategy development for UK circus and involves me working closely with stakeholders such as ACE, DCMS and DEFRA.

In 2008 I returned to work full time with NoFit State producing three shows Splott in the first 6 months Splott on the Landscape in January, Tabu in March (Co-producer) and Burn Swindon in June

Who is Stewart McGill?

Director of Playbox Theatre:

‘Playbox Theatre is a unique creative company based at The Dream Factory in the UK.

It exists to provide young people and developing artists a unique environment for training, creation and exploration in theatre and related artistic forms.’

Before this Stewart studied at Dartington College of Arts and Birmingham University. Stewart has previously worked with Cambridge Theatre Company, Haymarket Theatre Company - Leicester, English Shakespeare Company, Bristol Old Vic Theatre Company, Royal National Theatre (assessor for Young Theatre Challenge).
He is also the Course Validator for Central School of Speech and Drama BA Circus (with The Circus Space) and a member of Circus Arts Forum, Drama Advisor for The Arts Council of England. Stewart was also a judge for the European Capital of Culture 2008.

Who is Bill Ferguson?

Bill Ferguson started as a performer from a passion for Street and Circus Arts he obtained as a boy. Bill has performed nationally and internationally at major street, music and art festivals.

Bill is also the Founder of the Shrewsbury Street Festival, now in its fourth year and is called upon for his expertise by others wishing to start festivals in other areas.

Bill is originally from Montreal Canada.