Welcome to Articulation’s May 2020 newsletter, here you will find information for circus, street arts and physical theatre in Scotland in this time of Covid-19.
Articulation’s Informational Session: Creative Scotland Open Fund:
Sustaining Creative Development
It was great to see so many of you at Articulation’s online informational session on Monday 25th May. Many thanks to Jaine Lumsden, Theatre Officer with Creative Scotland, for elaborating on Creative Scotland’s repurposed Open Fund and responding to everyone’s questions. The information Jaine provided was very clear and feedback has been very positive. The end of the session also provided a chance for all to have a good informal catch up with each other. Martin Danziger, Creative Director of Modo - Circus with Purpose, proposed the idea of further sessions to discuss how we all may begin moving forward in future with creation, rehearsals and the future form of live events. Look out for more Articulation online sessions in the near future.
Apologies if you are feeling a little 'surveyed-out' at the moment - we promise you, we totally know the feeling. However...OutdoorArtsUK invites you to share some of your thoughts on the impact of the Covid-19 emergency on your work and the future of the Outdoor Arts sector. The answers are intended to feed into a variety of initiatives.
OutdoorArtsUK will use the responses to inform the OAUK submission to the DCMS (Department of Culture, Media and Sport) Select Committee inquiry into the immediate and long-term impact on DCMS organisations. Also, it is very important to have your input to feed into various OAUK reports and to inform initiatives and plans over the coming period.
Whether you are an individual artist or producer, an organisation, a festival or something in-between, we encourage you to share your thoughts and responses so that we can offer and consider a wide view of ideas and positions.
The Third Sector Interfaces (TSIs) across Scotland are carrying out a Third Sector Survey to get a strong understanding of the impact that the coronavirus pandemic is having on community groups, voluntary organisations and social enterprises, as well as the people and communities they support.
This is a national survey and the results will be able to be used locally and nationally. If your organisation covers more than one local authority area you should be able to answer once, noting all the local authorities you are involved with. The survey is confidential and should take 10-15 minutes to complete, with most questions being multiple choice.
The Catalyst:
How to stay connected while working remotely
Due to COVID-19, more people and organisations are starting to work remotely. The team at CAST have been doing this for a while and have produced a short article to share some of the things they’ve learnt and some of their research done which shapes practice.
The article discusses how to keep your team updated about what you’re doing and how you’re feeling.
Some of CAST’s more recent work in this is designed to create an environment of supportive behaviour and psychological safety within the team. This has been proven to be one of the most important things to creating high performing teams and is more important than ever in times of crisis and anxiety.
American Circus Educators: COVID-19 Resources for Circus Organisations
The purpose of ACE’s COVID-19 Response Guide is to help circus arts education organisations think through decision making about resuming, adapting, reducing, or pausing circus arts educational programming in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Making decisions about operations with these challenges in place is difficult, as is balancing the safety and business impacts of those decisions. There are no strategies that will work for all organisations, as circus arts education programs are very diverse, covering a wide range of activities and participants. Every circus arts education organisation must do its own assessment and planning, customised to specific circumstances and factors. ACE will continue to research and collect information from trusted sources to share with the community.
Make Space is a new research and development fund for Scotland-based artists to explore what performing arts for children could look like in the new normal. Catherine Wheels wants you to join them in looking to the future of our art form in a changed landscape.
The Make Space fund will support up to five interesting ideas that explore new ways of creating, presenting, and touring work for young Scottish audiences in an uncertain future.
You do not need to have a final product in mind, this is a fund to ask questions and research ideas.
Why is Catherine Wheels interested in hearing from you?
Catherine Wheels want to support artists in imagining what this new theatre landscape could look like. Some of the questions you should consider and include when applying for the fund are:
How can we continue to work together when there are times we must work apart?
How flexible and nimble can our work be?
How can we be carbon neutral in the way we work, the projects we create, and the way we tour?
How do we create and share work where theatres may not always be an option for presenting?
How do we develop the ability for children’s theatre to work flexibly in alternative spaces like schools, community venues, outdoors etc?
Can we make work that is successful online, but also, crucially, works live?
How do we create work that best serves our local audience and community?
The Third Sector Resilience Fund (TSRF) was announced on 18 March 2020 by Communities Minister Aileen Campbell as part of a £350m support package for the sector as a response to the Coronavirus pandemic.
The Third Sector Resilience Fund will support organisations across the third sector who are at risk of closure due to a sharp decrease in income or that are unable to deliver their services during this difficult period. The fund will distribute £20m of emergency funds over the coming months.
The Fund will support registered charities, voluntary organisations and social enterprises that already deliver vital services in communities but that find themselves in financial difficulties directly as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic. The funding’s primary intention is to help these organisations to stabilise and manage cashflows over this difficult period.
The Fund will be delivered by Firstport, Social Investment Scotland and the Corra Foundation and will provide grants between £5,000-£100,000. In addition there will be up to a further £5m available in fully flexible, 0% interest loans starting at £50,000.
Small charities and constituted community groups with innovative ideas that benefit their community can apply for funding of up to £50,000 for projects that build more connected, more resilient communities. In response to the Covid-19, Aviva are temporarily opening up the Fund to projects that will ensure organisations can adapt or maintain critical services and infrastructure in response to the impacts of COVID-19. Projects must still relate to one of Aviva’s key funding areas.
Charity Bank: Covid-19 Emergency Funding for Charities and Social Sector Organisations
Cash flow has been a growing cause for concern within the sector for a number of years.
As a result of the Coronavirus, many organisations are now in an extremely precarious position, often having to deliver additional services with fewer volunteers and staff members, while having to cancel fundraising activities.
Charity Bank have compiled a list of emergency funds for charities and social enterprises that are experiencing difficulties. It will be updated regularly are identified so keep an eye out for new opportunities!
In under 5 minutes, Just Enterprise advisor Alex Rooney will help you to understand how to flex your cashflow so as to make better business decisions based on your current situation and potential changes.
Who’s speaking up for the arts? Here’s what unions, member organisations, campaigners and supporters are doing and saying on your behalf.
ArtsProfessional are also posting resources to help you feel creative, manage your money and support your health and wellbeing.
Support for Theatre Professionals during Coronavirus
In light of the closure of many UK theatres due to the Covid-19 virus, leading theatrical charities have come together to centralise information about how and where you can access support if you work in the theatre industry.
Theatre Support are aware that concerns will be around mental heath, finance and more.
Please choose wisely where you apply, only applying to foundations whose specific remit you meet, as applications are very high at the moment and this will enable the, to help as many people as possible during this unprecedented time.
Some of the larger charities have generously offered to act as conduits for certain areas of the industry. They may pass you on to another organisation better placed to help you.
These are worrying and uncertain times. The Coronavirus outbreak has changed daily life for us all in Scotland and has had a real impact on how many of us are feeling. It's ok to not feel yourself right now, and Clear you head have some great tips to help get you through it.
British Red Cross have created a support line for everyone to access for mental health support as well as practical advice and signposting to services/organisations who may be able to best support you during this difficult time.
The support line was set up to provide support to communities and
people in need during the Coronavirus pandemic. The support line gives people without a support network someone to talk to, and can help them access things they may need like food, medicine and emotional support.
Odin Teatret: Mr Peanut - A character that cannot die
Death reflects on its career as Mr Peanut, the character that for fifty years has participated in many of Odin Teatret’s performances.
Mr Peanut reveals his secret: he cannot die, only transform himself.
He enacts his constant mutations with dances, poems, photos and films evoking meetings, travels, adventures and landscapes of his long life.
A ripping yarn about love, luck and bingo that takes you on a flight of fantasy.
The masters of aerial spectacle present a stunning new show suitable for everyone from 8 years to 98 years old.
It’s 1974, and Bingo Fever has hit the town of Ballydawn, where everyone dreams of scooping the huge Snowball jackpot. But when star-crossed lovers Jimmy and Moya try to rig the game, fate, family and a giant storm get in the way. Will destiny keep them apart, or will their lucky number finally come up? Bingo Wings is a story about luck and love that takes you on a flight of fantasy that’s funny, moving and spectacular.
This exciting new Fidget Feet production, blending circus, aerial dance and theatre, is delivered by an award-winning team including director Jo Mangan, choreographer Chantal McCormick, playwright Tom Swift and composer Jym Daly
Crossroads is an ensemble aerial theatre short that explores the characters’ as they are caught in a “crossroads” in their lives. Incorporating the beauty and skill of five aerial silks artists and one stilt walker combined with innovative and theatrical storytelling, Crossroads is a balanced blend of mystery, grace, and emotional imagery.
Washed Up is a tender, witty documentary showing a creative relationship in crisis. What drives two veterans of outdoor arts to keep making vital street theatre when some days they are barely on speaking terms? The creative mechanics of Desperate Men’s fractious but fruitful partnership are laid bare, as they reflect on personal and collective mortality, ecological precarity, and their unique legacy of desperation.
This poetic and painfully poignant film was directed by Nathan Hughes of Rough Glory films and won Best Edit at Close Up: Edinburgh Docu Fest 2019. It was also officially selected by The Dumbo Film Festival in New York and the Buenos Aires Film Festival.
Desperate Men are making Washed Up available to watch FREE during the coronavirus crisis. It’s a cinematic film so watch on the biggest screen you can find (with popcorn if available)!
These Physical Theatre online sessions are a great opportunity to explore your body, and its expressive possibilities. You will embark on a journey of discovery within your body, challenge your practice, and develop your own movement and creative language.
All or Nothing Aerial Dance have moved all their training and classes online for the term and have been working hard to adjust to these changes and ensure that classes are accessible for everyone who wants them.
Classes can be booked individually or as a block and there are a number of payment options available.
Aerial Edge have moved all their classes online so you can continue to train and enjoy circus whilst in Lockdown.
All classes are free but in order to support independent artists and teachers during this time Aerial Edge ask you to leave a donation as they have had all other work cancelled. Please do attend the classes even if you cannot afford to donate right now, Aerial Edge recognise that this is a difficult time for everyone. However if you can afford to donate more than the minimum, know you are helping keep artists fed and working.
100% of the weekly funds are divided between the teachers. They are recommending a minimum of £5/class or £25/week, more if you can afford it.
Neverthere Festival and Surge:
Established Artists Residency
9th and 10th June 2020
Deadline: 5pm on the 2nd of June
Neverthere and Surge are inviting applications for an online residency designed to give space for established artists to develop new ideas in the company of skilled practitioners. Participants will have the opportunity to develop new ideas concentrating on the integration of digital technologies and performance – particularly projects that can take place online. This two-day residency will involve input from professional, highly experienced mentors from a variety of performance and digital backgrounds.
They are welcoming applications from collaborations between performance makers and digital artists and are also happy to receive applications from individual artists. Applications from digital designers, games designers, coders, theatre makers, designers, performers, and those working in other digital forms are also most welcome.
Focus on new formats! LOCALIZE calls for the rediscovery of public space in artistic positions and playful approaches, LOCALIZE are looking for corona virus compatible performances.
In autumn 2020, LOCALIZE "Centre Shock" negotiates different artistic and participatory perspectives on the theme of "centre" through installations, performances, sounds, pictures, workshops, talks and games.
Who or what determines the centres of our cities and what is marginalised? What do we want to place at the centre of an open community? What holds us together and how can "centre" be rethought after the "corona shock"? For one month, LOCALIZE puts new formats in the centre. Through the display of various artistic positions new spaces of cooperation and visions of central values and ideas unfold. Unusual approaches to urban development irritate, question and design. As an urban laboratory, LOCALIZE opens up spaces, gives impulses to the city and is a platform for collaborative experiments.
Heart of Glass, with curation by the vacuum cleaner in collaboration with Cecilia Wee and in partnership with Live Art Development Agency (UK), Create Ireland and Gessnerallee (Switzerland).
What creative solutions have marginalised people developed to survive before Covid-19?
With For About 2020 will feature short video provocations, sharings of practice and projects and discussion of various responses by artists and activists, all streamed into your home. It has intentionally been designed to work around the shifting nature of these times - allowing for work care, fluctuating schedules and new contributors to be added.
With For About are looking for existing practice/projects, live projects or folx that are thinking and making the future that respond to the outline above, from anywhere in the world. They are very keen to hear about things they won’t have heard about, the unchampioned, undiscovered and low-key. Projects and practice from marginalised people that are urgent, honest, tender and vital.
Want to take part in the cabaret? – Surge are looking for cabaret acts – existing or new – that can interact with the audience in Zoom in some way.
Artforms Surge are looking for include:
Circus/ Dance
Stand-up
Music
Physical Comedy/ clowning
Weird and slightly indescribable acts….
The act should be no longer than 10 mins. The cabaret takes place each Wednesday night at 9.00 pm, and there is a rehearsal on the same day in the morning. Surge are guaranteeing £50 per act, and hoping to increase this should they receive enough donations from the audience.
If you are interested – please send a 1 minute video of the proposed act and a short description of how you see the act working in an interactive way on Zoom. Please send your proposal to alan@surge.scot
In these fast moving times we need to move both swiftly and slowly. With For About 2020 creates a vital, slow and complex space between art, activism, care and social practice in response to COVID-19.
It wilfully asks - in facing this crisis, another ten years of austerity, ecological collapse, harsher borders, more racism and deeper ableism within deeply divided societies - how can artists, activists and organisations make vital change within our communities and beyond?
When?
With For About 2020 will happen over 5 weeks, lasting one hour each week.
How?
With For About 2020 will feature short video provocations, sharings of practice and projects and discussion of various responses by artists and activists, all streamed into your home. It has intentionally been designed to work around the shifting nature of these times - allowing for work care, fluctuating schedules and new contributors to be added.
An American Theatre article suggests that people will be reluctant to come back to crowded auditoriums, even when they can. There’s been speculation that theatre will soothe its audience’s fears with a socially-distanced ‘new normal’; sure-fire hits or celebrity monologues, playing to social distancing audiences that fill only a third of the auditorium.
But what if theatre makes this a time for fringe to the front? Experimentation first? Bigger platforms for the live artists and experimental theatre makers who’ve been trialling new forms for decades? Exeunt Magazine have produced an article with some alternative visions for what theatre might look like over the next few months and years. Ones that probably won’t bring in the huge revenues that struggling buildings need to plug the gaps in their finances, but could show future audiences that theatre is something worth saving at all costs; something forward-looking, local, subversive and immediate.
CircusTalk: Circus and Changing Realities 2020 - Virtual Panel Sessions
The functioning of society around the world has been challenged by the pandemic on many levels–with our current and future realities heavily impacted. This situation brings a change in circus as well. If there has ever been a time to unite forces in our industry, it is now. As a result, CircusTalk’s new initiative brings together professional players from
the international circus ecosystem to start the conversation both about circus as an art form and circus under these rapidly changing circumstances.
The series of virtual panels and discussions about the future of circus called “Circus and Changing Realities 2020.” In this curated set of online panels (since March 2020), we have opened up the floor for circus discussions about the changing face of circus among a wide variety of professionals in the circus sector. We continue that exploration and delve into best practices, improvements, adaptations and collaborations for strengthening the circus arts networks that we have painstakingly built together.
Presenting Circus has never been easy. Will it be even harder or do we have a window of opportunity here?
Call Out to Artists and Makers, groups and organisations involved with Circus, Street Arts, Physical Theatre - let us and others know about your work. Take your place in Articulation’s Directory on the Website by sending your information to info@articulationarts.org
