2022

Outside the church of Santa Croce in Florence, my new neighbourhood for 2022

2021 saw 2 mini-network Fence meetings circumscribed by COVID limitations on travel, with only 7 Fencers managing to participate at Dramatikerinnen in Graz and a further 7 at Les Quatre Coins du Mot in La Charité sur Loire. With COVID and climate change it might also be time to rethink the shape of network meetings which could perhaps begin on trains or boats and so develop phases during longer travel, with fewer aeroplanes. 2022 was left fallow; we will regroup in 2023, not least to mark our 20th birthday

In terms of Fence projects Boom! morphed from a convergent project under the umbrella of shared colonial histories into a divergent one, with each of the artists developing their work in isolation - but with some valuable on-line labs for 6 of the 7 UK and Dutch theatre makers and a lovely sidebar with Dash Arts - Art in the Face of Empire - as part of their podcast feature on Felix de Rooy.

Cre-Actors was launched in 2021 and managed a splendid intensive 5-day workshop at The Cartoucherie, in Paris, home of Theatre du Soleil. In 2022 this project built on the great work begun here, continuing in Bologna with Teatro Dell’ Argine and Border Crossings in Dublin, with a quick management meeting in Stockholm, home to The Fence network. Read all about the project here: https://issuu.com/border-crossings/docs/cre-actors_e-book

My Heart is in the East has been slowly cooking for some time now and like a great stew it is ready to serve. Jessica, Fred, Rosie and myself managed an excellent week in residence at Bazar Café in La Charité-sur-Loire in August - merci Alain Foix - to block the action and rehearse, with the actors off book by the end of the year. The team developed the interfaith community relationships we started to build in Birmingham, Manchester and Bradford with online workshops and a video (thank you Adrian Cameron) showcasing the play and the project and a website too.

 https://gecko-oriole-5rbp.squarespace.com/

The Crossing The Line partnership successfully completed the Ogmius project at the end of 2021, with support from the EU Erasmus+ Programme. The French agency dubbed it a Best Practices project, which we will definitely take as a result. The partnership met online in January 2022 to consider further options. Crossing The Line’s EU Creative Europe funded project Trasna Na Line (TNL) completed in 2022, following a final residency in Rotterdam and wrap up meeting in Malmo. While we were limited to a Digital Festival in 2021, (not to mention a delightful week on the islands in Galway bay exploring Artaud’s legacy with Zone Poem, Theatr 21, Blue Teapot and Compagnie de l’Oiseau Mouche). The CTL partnership began seriously exploring the possibility of a future CTL Festival as part of Bradford’s bid for UK City of Culture in 2025, and with it a further bid to the EU Creative Europe programme alongside for La Traverse as a successor project to TNL in February 2023.

2022 saw the Institute for Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship’s largest ever intake for the Masters in Arts Administration and Cultural Policy programme on which I teach. Goldsmiths is full of brilliant individuals. ICCE remains a haven of relative sanity in the otherwise murky waters of UK Higher Education.

2022 also saw me starting to explore possibilities in Italy, which have begun with some work with the rather wonderful Francesca Billi and Massimo Macaluso at Euradia, where we managed to secure Creative Europe Large Co-operation project funding of €2m for Dancing Histories, linking Heritage Sites with dance companies and local communities. In rewriting the bid I basically just added some dramaturgs (Shhh - don’t tell anyone).

But the big news for 2022 was really settling in to life in Florence, where Debbie and I moved at the back end of 2021, for Debbie’s new job as Head of Acting at L'Oltrarno - scuola di formazione del mestiere dell'attore - linked to the Teatro Nazionale di Toscana. It’s been a great privilege to host friends and family in our wonderful apartment: made even more wonderful in August by the arrival of Fence stalwart, playwright, director, digital whizz and all round force of nature - Beatriz Cabur and her lovely family - as our new next-door-neighbours!