OUTSIDE ONLINE – LONGER SUMMARY OF DISCUSSIONS If anyone without access to Facebook wants to see a full transcript of the discussions, we can email them over as a Word document – contact kate@desperatemen.com
New opportunities Some interesting news from various people about future projects. Whalley Range All Stars have a commission for new show ‘Future’ from Mintfest and the Brewery Arts Centre, Kendal, turning a disused shop into an installation. This will show at Mintfest 2013. Mandy Dike, ex of The World Famous, is setting up a new company called And Now, to continue to make outdoor work of varying scales. Walk the Plank are working with Frank Cottrell Boyce on a show in Derry this June – the Return of Colmcille – plus the Manchester Day Parade. Dance Xchange (Birmingham) are working on the relaunch of West Midlands Dance. Name three things that would improve your ability to create work A few themes emerged. Some wanted more people with the vision to support new work (in funding bodies, festivals or agents) as there is a tendency to ‘play it safe’ and not be willing to take a risk on new work / younger, unproved artists. Others suggested more opportunities and platforms to present work – plus investment of time / and or money. Plus the need for places to test out that new work (busking was suggested…) Is the UK becoming a receiving house rather than a producing house for large scale work? One participant pointed out that it always has been. We also discussed the inevitable contrast between UK (where shows tend to be one-offs) and France – where there are creation centres and support specifically for outdoor arts productions , where shows can run for 15 years. So – do we need to get more funding for this? From ACE or from new funding sources – and what might they be? – get public to pay for tickets? More collaboration between companies? Plus - while there aren’t many producers of work of this scale in the UK, they do exist. So why does the work tend to be a one-off? Lack of opportunities? More funding needed? And not all companies who do produce successful, large-scale, sustainable shows are French - Xarxa, Puja, Voala, (Spain), Titanick (Germany), Tol (Holland) were all mentioned. So perhaps it’s also a cultural divide. Is there something about Europe having more porous borders / being more cosmopolitan or a more established support for outdoor arts? And the channel cuts us off from that? Or – perhaps we shouldn’t even try to compete but enjoy the fact that what the UK does well is small-medium scale touring shows.
Ace is using an image of Royal de Luxe as its cover photo on Facebook. Discuss. Some said ACE should be using a photo of a UK company. Others pointed out that Royal de Luxe was an amazing spectacle that introduced many people to outdoor art – it set a benchmark for audiences and outdoor arts companies, and set a level of ambition for artists and funders to aspire too. Plus it was actually commissioned by the UK (Liverpool City Council) – so what’s wrong with celebrating the great work that happens here? And – surely good news that ACE are using a photo of great, free, outdoor art. Are the opportunities for showing provocative work reducing or shifting to new places? This provoked a very interesting debate on what ‘provocative’ actually means (provoking an emotional response? Brave? Controversial? the dictionary definition is ‘to deliberately anger and cause adverse reaction) and whether in fact any British – or European – companies ARE producing ‘provocative’ work? The number of street festivals supporting provocative work has shrunk – so are these sorts of shows being presented more on the live circuit or in alternative spaces? Some said Glastonbury / Shambala and other festivals are programming more theatre / walkabout shows – others that they tend to pay ‘peanuts’ so it’s not sustainable. A few people said that companies tend to play it safe in order to get booked (so a ‘chicken and egg’ situation in response to the comment in another topic about producers not wanting to take risks on provocative work). One suggestion was that British companies are ‘timid’ – either from lack of confidence or money or both– and tend to produce work that holds back; is not bold enough. And perhaps health and safety plays a role! (particularly with pyrotechnics) This provocative theme was picked up at For the Love of It by, amongst others, Bim Mason in his session and Ed Taylor provided a very interesting written contribution on the theme Encouraging young theatre / circus graduates to produce outdoor theatre There were also some good comments on how to encourage young theatre / circus graduates to produce outdoor theatre, with suggestions including more seminars / workshops on courses plus opportunities for students to see shows. This would give a better introduction to the sector while they are still studying as many still have a preconception of outdoor / street art as Covent-Garden style street shows.
NUTS AND BOLTS – HOW TO SET UP A LIVE ONLINE FORUM! (for anyone interested in setting up their own).
After doing some research, we decided to hold the forum on Facebook as this seemed the best platform for a multi-topic live forum. It was simple to add the Facebook Forum page app and make four of us moderators (all of us needed to add the app to our individual pages as well as the Desperate Men page). Using online forum platforms would have required participants to sign up and create a login etc, whereas as long as they were already Facebook members, all they had to do was ‘Like’ our page to join in. The downside to this is that not everyone is on Facebook – however we did ask people to email us any suggestions /comments beforehand if they wanted to join in but could not access the forum. We decide to have a ‘live’ , time-limited discussion to make it easier to moderate and manage the forum. We tried to make sure that we would have plenty of participants by sending out newsletters and individual emails to key contacts, as well as posting details of the event on the Facebook pages of relevant organisations and tweeting about it. Once it was going, we tried to hop about between topics keeping an eye on what was happening and moving discussions along, while tweeting