Elemental

Rose Fenton was the keynote speaker at the elemental event in the South West looking closely and with experience at the regional theme.

Below is a copy of Rose’s presentation, followed by her notes.

Below you will find the notes brought along by Rose Fenton to accompany her presentation.

To download your own copy of the presentation click here, and to download the notes please click here.

Were you at the event? Let us know what you think by commenting on this post - we’re waiting to hear from you!

If you would like to find out more about the South West please click here.

Liz Pugh and John Wassell from Walk the Plank were the keynote speakers at the ‘elemental’ event in the North West. They talked about their experience in relation to the region’s theme:

“In the North West our focus is on how local authorities and producers of Street Arts and Circus can use the prospect of a large international event in their city to promote a relevant programme of outdoor activity.”

They began by showing an example of their work from the Manchester Commonwealth Games closing ceremony, see below:

Here is the presentation given by Liz and John:

Download the PDF here.

Liz and John gave an insightful, honest and human account of working with large scale sporting events and how this has impacted positively on the artists they worked with, individuals and the company as a whole - quite inspiring.

The elemental team would like to extend a big thank you to Liz and John for stepping in at last minute, and again to Maggie Clarke and her team at Xtrax for their help in giving the North West event, a regional feel.

To see more about the North West region click here.

Marta Almirall Elizalde was a guest speaker at elemental in the North West on Friday 5th June 2009. Marta talked about her experience as Artistic Director of Roseland Musical and Director of Festivals and Traditional Culture in Barcelona - pre and post Olympics.

Below is the presentation Marta gave at the event at Manchester City Library, prior to Xtrax later that evening.

To download your own copy of Marta’s presentation please click here for the pdf.

To find out more about the North West region click here.

Do you have comments or opinions about the sector or presentation, if so please let us know by commenting below!

On Friday 5th June, Julie Tait from Kendal Arts International joined at the Manchester Central Library for Elemental North West. (Here is a brief synopsis of the event).

Julie Tait used two presentations introducing Kendal Arts International then Lakes Alive:

Lakes Alive:

To download copies of the documents please click the relevant document names - Lakes Alive, Kendal Arts International

For more about the North West please click here

For all those at Elemental East Midlands, here is Frank Wilson’s presentation on ‘Commissioning New Work’.

All notes from the event will be typed up and added, so please subscribe to the site by email for full updates.

To download straight to your desktop as a pdf - click here.

Do you commission new work? What are your recommendations for commissioners if you are an artist?

For more information about the themes and East Midlands region, please click here.

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.

By Stewart McGill, Director, Playbox Theatre, Warwick.

(The following post is the first part of the presentation Stewart made at Elemental WM as part of the break out session and his work with Playbox Theatre.)

To consider the work of Circus and multi-disciplinary arts with young people here at Playbox Theatre is to also reflect and consider where Circus as both entertainment and art form has emerged in last 20-30 years. Maybe the ‘Little Seedlings’ are more than young people aspiring to gain confidence, skills and talent – maybe the image can be applied to a movement that swept across the world backed by Government visionaries and motivators in places like France and Quebec.

To put it into a context one has to go back some time. In the post-war years Circus was big entertainment business – here in the UK Circus directors divided the country into three segments - West Country/Mid and South/North and Scotland – the big three circuses, Chipperfield, Bertram Mills and Billy Smart’s rotated in 3 yearly cycles with massive tenting shows – animal based but certainly in the case of Smarts heavily influenced by the now gigantic US Road shows, The Three Rings of Ringling Bros and Barnum and Bailey, Cole Brothers, Clydel Beatty etc. With Smarts the focus shifted to ‘The Spec’, large arena fantasies based on Wild West, Fairyland and Arabian Nights themes involving the whole company on ground, in air, on floats – this was dynamic, interactive, passionate, visual and aural circus for the new age … until TV came along and audiences deserted many forms of live entertainment for the miracle Box (see Greatest Show on Earth – Circus of Horrors – preserved on film for the live visuals).

When Playbox Theatre began its mission with young people in 1986, Circus was off most agendas in the UK … certainly it was not considered an art form at all. In the UK Circus was all but dead – killed off by more sophisticated forms of leisure.

I had always cherished a love of circus as entertainment art, and its possibilities – Degas, Picasso, Lautrec – and not lost on ballet creators – Diagalev, Stravinsky. As means of communication – the language of circus being universal, the body as communicator of emotion, fear, anxiety, love, jealousy …. Who could forget the classic circus movie ‘Trapeze’ playing out a love triangle high above the ring of Cirque D’Hiver in Paris?

As part of Playbox Development we started looking at an emerging new form … we lovingly called it ‘New Circus’ and it was a step away from street entertainment – busking with attitude, juggling, acrobatics and often poor attempts at narrative. Traditional circus hated it – condemned as having ‘no skill at all’ – ‘the great unwashed’ – anarchists – rubbish. Yet here was something that seemed to capture the imagination once more, in theatre and dance – we sensed a potential to steal from the new form for Playbox – we met and were inspired by young rebels forging new identities – Archaos – living the Mad Max existence. Plume – in Paris – creating poetry in circus and a bunch of hippies inspired by Peter Schumauus Bread and Puppet theatre – called Cirque Du Soleil. In UK don’t ignore work of Brian Dewhurst – Andro who inspired Guy Laliberte and Gilles Ste-Croix with his human circus!

For his full personal perspective following on from this introduction please click here for your downloadable pdf.

To see all about the region, please click here.

Recently we were pleased to announce the keynote speakers for the South East and now is your chance to meet the Dragon’s face to face!

Neil Butler (UZ Events):

Neil Butler is an artist, cultural strategist and creator of festivals and
events. In the 80¹s he founded the Brighton Zap Club, curated programmes at the ICA and directed shows for the South Bank in London. He worked as an artist and performer in several performance and music groups and toured with them around the Europe. In 1988 he was invited to Glasgow to create festivals and events as part of a programme to prepare the city for being European City of Culture in 1990. In 1994 he founded UZ Events with directors from Unique Events and Zap Productions and became a specialist in closing down cities to create venues. In 1999 he created signature events for Glasgow when it was UK City of Architecture and Design. Butler was Event director of the STUC Centennial celebrations and Glasgow¹s Millennium Hogmanay.

In 1999 his art-work Wrap the World involved simultaneous events in
Johannesburg, Delhi, Sydney, New York, Porto and Glasgow and was broadcast worldwide by the BBC. The work was exhibited at Gallery of Modern Art Glasgow and toured Scotland in a travelling exhibition. Butler has always been interested in exploring the line between art and entertainment and the tension between the instrumental use of art and ³art for art¹s sake². His current work focuses on the nature of identity.

He has devised and presented cultural programmes for the Scottish Government in Europe, USA and Canada. In 2009 he was appointed Director of the event that will open Scotland¹s ³Year of the Homecoming²

Neil Butler is Festival Director of Glasgow’s Merchant City Festival and Big in Falkirk Scotland¹s National Street Arts Festival. He is the British
representative of In Situ a pan-european network that funds the commissioning of major cross border arts projects. He is also the Chairman of the Hikkaduwa Area Relief Fund a Scottish charity created to support an area of Sri Lankan following the tsunami. In 2006 he established the Chandrasevana Centre in Dodanduwa as a local arts centre and community resource that also offers a residency programme for international artists.He was responsible for brokering and directing a multi faith peace concert in Sri Lanka in January 2007 at a time of increasing hostility and violence.

Brigitte Orasinski (Strange Cargo):

Strange Cargo is a highly evolved arts organisation, whose ability to respond creatively and professionally to an increasingly broad range of creative opportunities and challenges has led to the company occupying an exclusive position in the arena of cultural provision.

Our core aims are Access, Participation & Excellence with a broad
programme which includes Public Art, Celebratory Arts, Gallery based
projects and exhibitions, Training and Education. We deliver high
profile creative projects, often incorporating large-scale participation
as central to delivery. High production values underpin everything we
do, and the legacy value for participants within our programme is
exemplary. The diversity of our creative team enables us to deliver
unique responses to commissions, often working with significant numbers of participants. We devise and coordinate large, complex projects, employing professional expertise to support the programme.

2008 National and International Awarding bodies include RTPI, Charity
Awards, Arts & Business, European Urban Prize for Public Space.

Brigitte is Artistic Director of Strange Cargo and a Fellow of the Royal
Society of the Arts. She studied Fine Art at Kent Institute of Art and Design Canterbury, before embarking upon a professional creative career which has involved developing strategies for engagement in the arts, including large scale celebratory programmes, the development of Georges House Gallery, Folkestone and creating award winning public realm artworks.

Bill Gee (Bill Gee Associates):

Bill Gee has worked in a variety of roles, art forms and contexts for the past 20 years, most recently as a creative producer working with a diversity of art form practices for diverse audiences, particularly presented in outdoor and public realm contexts. He is supported by ACE, London as an RFO for his development time on new projects, his advisory work to emerging and mid-career artists and his leadership role within the Outdoor sector and advocating for the continuing support of Independent Producers.

He operates through a combination of programming seasons or festivals and directly producing artist’s projects. Whilst specialising in outdoor and public realm work, Bill continues to work with artists from a range of art from disciplines and through the years has worked with theatre, dance, music, visual arts, live art, spoken word, participative arts, film and video. Recent projects include the Inside Out festival in Dorset; Nutkhut’s Movieplex; Theatre Consultant Programmer for the National Theatre’s Watch This Space programme and touring work by Dutch theatre maker Dries Verhoeven. He is an Associate Producer with Artsadmin.

As the inaugural Coordinator of the Independent Street Arts Network (ISAN), Bill was responsible for developing between 2001 and 2004 a series of influential symposia, conferences and subsequent publications on street arts and outdoor work. Directly influencing the 2003 Licensing Act to promote local authorities to licence public space for cultural events. He has developed and chaired high level discussion panels as part of Artichoke’s Larger than Life conference; XTRAX international showcase Manchester and Festival aan de Werf, Utrecht.

He has recently become a Board Member of ISAN and a member of the Regional Council for ACE East Midlands.

We are delighted to announce that Neil Butler from UZ Events, Brigitte Orasinski from Strange Cargo, and Bill Gee from Bill Gee Associates will be our key note speakers to give an insiders view of the South East theme.

RSVP NOW to avoid disappointment - places are limited for this special event!

More information about the speakers will be available here on the run up to the event on the 8th April!

Map for the venue is located here.