PUBLISHED: January 3rd, 2012
Outdoor Arts Peer Exchange Week
University of Kent Canterbury, Jarman Building, 1st – 5th Aug 2011
The week offered rehearsal opportunities and workshops, informal peer exchange and mentoring, all free of charge.
Using facilities through the week were: Estelle Rosenfeld; Wide Eyed Theatre; Galloping Cuckoos; Red Threaders; Accidental Collective; FAF Arts and DAF Music.
The open programme attracted a wide range of individuals and involved:
Monday 1st Aug
12.30pm – Talk – International & large scale touring -Pippa Bailey
Tuesday 2nd Aug
12.30pm Talk – Outdoor Design – Fiona Watt
2pm Workshop – Design for outdoors – Fiona Watt
Wed 3rd Aug
12.30pm Talk – Dealing with volunteer promoters – Dawn Badland (Applause)
2pm – Discussion – Can we make a Kent Outdoor Artists Cooperative?
Thursday 4th Aug
12.30pm Talk – The Business Of Street Theatre – Gary Barber (Natural Theatre Company)
Friday 5th Aug
10.30am Workshop – Using Masks Outdoors – Gary Barber (Natural Theatre Company)
Many of Fiona Watt’s “provocations” for the scenography of outdoor arts also acted as stimuli for general debate throughout the week and cropped up in other speakers’ talks:
- What is materially different to working outdoors?
- Landscape / pilgrimage / site-specific / street festival / public realm / heritage / custom / celebration / revelation
- Outdoor Arts: “alternative” protest or cultural branding?
- National / regional identity?
- Where are the legal edges of making work in the public realm?
- Do we still dare cross these boundaries and barriers
- Is anticipation a greater part of the process?
- What is my relationship with the space and the place? How do I define that?
- How is the audience experience mediated, guided and signposted?
- How do they know we are there?
- What is the relationship with the audience?
- Is there a text?
- Is there a narrative?
- Is there an existing architecture?
- To what extent are the audience actors?
- Do we want the performance to belong or stand out?
- The City as my stage
- Is the getting there as important as the arriving or taking part?
- Is what audience wears part of the scenography?
- What is the competition (in the public arena) for the audience’ attention?
- Am I responsible for that?
- How personal is our response to the landscape?