Elemental

Rachel Clare, Producer and Artistic Director of Crying Out Loud.

Rachel Clare established Crying Out Loud in 2001 as a new company to produce and tour dynamic new performance with the help of a Producers Bursary from Arts Council London. Previously she was instrumental in trail blaizing the role of the freelance creative producer and developed a new way of thinking about programming by combining and producing work across many art-forms for any location on any scale.

She has worked with a vast number of artists in UK and overseas combining circus, theatre, dance and visual arts in performance. Her main achievements before and alongside Crying Out Loud include: The Great Outdoors festival 1992-99 at SBC; the Easter Delirium season at the QEH; The Catch at Lyric Hammersmith 2000-05; Free Time at Somerset House; Circus Programming Associate at The Roundhouse 2005-07 and curator for Manchester International Festival’s The Great Indoors 2007 and 2009.

Crying Out Loud is about to launch City Circ, a new network of inner and outer London venues, an ‘alliance’ for contemporary Circus Arts in London. This will include a ‘curated’ season from April to August across London to firmly establish circus in theatres across the capital.

COL continues to develop the regional touring circuit of mid and large scale venues and is also a lead partner on a cross channel project to tour and produce new Anglo/Franco circus performance work between northern France and southern England. Rachel is also a member of the European Informal Circus Network now part of Circostrada since 2001.

Rachel talked about her work with Crying Out Loud and her role of producer in the sector, below are a couple of bullet points about her presentation:

For more information please visit Crying Out Loud and City Circ websites.

Were you at the London event? Have you seen the work of Crying Out Loud or attended City Circ?

Please use this posts or any related posts to make comments generally or about the event, speakers and themes that emerged…make it a place for discussion!

Thursday 23rd April saw the London ‘elemental’ event take place as part of Arts Council London Office, Vision session. Vision sessions are internal training events that focus on different themes. They took the opportunity of elemental to look at street and circus arts.

The London office hosted Arts Council staff, some Local Authority staff, along with key companies for the region. Prior to the event we were delighted to announce Lyn Gardner as the Keynote Speaker. She was supported by four artistic companies and producers:

Ajay Chhabra – Director of Nutkhut
Roger Hartley – Director of Bureau Of Silly ideas
Ali King – Director of Turtle Key Arts
Rachel Clare – Producer and Artistic Director of Crying Out Loud

Each speaker provided some inspiring examples of their work and some arresting video and images, giving us a sense of the excitement and skill involved. They gave an overview of past work, present work and plans for the future. They also touched on the challenges in the sector, in terms of development, space, place, support and, of course, funding.

Lyn Gardner followed with an inspirational and informed speech about the sector and the impact it has on audience and society. She provided a real rally cry for the sector, artists and stakeholders alike and gave her view on the cuts announced in Alistair Darlings budget!

Following her inspiring and thought provoking speech the floor opened up for Q&A, this was long awaited if the nods of agreement during her speech were anything to go by.

We will be posting more details of each speaker soon so watch this space.

Were you at the event? What did you enjoy most? What was said that you are still thinking about now? Let us know.