The Theatre Backpacker (www.theatreartlife.com)
RURAL ARTS FESTIVALS UK:
The Heads Up Festival
By Jack Paterson | Part 1 of 2
This article was first published at https://www.theatreartlife.com/acting-singing/heads-up-festival/
This season, I joined Vancouver’s Theatre Conspiracy on the UK Tour of their award-winning Foreign Radical. Following the successful presentation at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and receiving The Scotsman Fringe First Award, Conspiracy was the first Canadian company invited to join the Battersea Arts Centre’s Collaborative Touring Network, this was a unique opportunity to experience the networks activities from the inside and meet with some of the folks leading arts festivals in the UK rural areas.
The Collaborative Touring Network (CTN) is a partnership between London’s Battersea Arts Centre and eight local partners in Hull, Darlington, Gloucester, Thanet, Torbay, Wigan, Peterborough and Medway. The CTN was founded in 2013 with the vision is of “a nation where everyone has inspiring art and culture on their doorstep”. Over the past five years, the Collaborative Touring Network has produced, presented and promoted diverse events to feed an appetite for culture in communities across the UK.
Conspiracy began our tour at The New Theatre Royal (Portsmouth), then joined the CTN for three festivals: the Heads Up Festival (Hull), the Pain the Town Festival (Medway), and the Strike a Light Festival (Gloucester) with a pitstop for a week of performances at London’s Artsdepot.
Through our tour, we were supported by the magnificent B.A.C. technical team clambering up ladders, setting up the cctv cameras, and basically adapting to unique needs of our interactive instillation to each unique venue we landed in – especially important as Foreign Radical was also the most technically demanding production to be brought to the network. Our traveling companions were, Non Zero One’s Ground Control. Due to the age restriction of the piece – only 7-12 years olds were permitted to participate – I was unable to catch the interactive space mission but heard nothing but exciting feedback.
I took advantage of this opportunity and reached out to the leadership teams of the festivals to learn more about the UK rural arts initiatives and the companies making them happen.
A Dialogue with festival producer Dave Windass
What are your ambitions, dreams and future hopes for the festival?
That it continues. That audiences build. That everyone knows about it. That work produced for and at the festival is regarded as the best. That it thrives and that audiences take ownership of it and that it outlives us. That we continue to present great theatre and performance.
Why do you believe this work is necessary?
The work we include in the festival programme can change lives, the way people think, make life worth living. It says something about contemporary Britain and the rest of the world. It provides artists with a new way of presenting and touring their work. It shakes the foundations not just of the city but of the nation.
About David Windass
Dave Windass is a Hull based writer. His plays include Revolutions (2015), Yalda (with Roya Amiri, 2015), The Whitsun Weddings (2014) and, for Hull Truck, Ballroom Blitz (2012), On A Shout (2008), Sully (2006) and Kicked Into Touch (2005). For E52, he co-produces the Heads Up Festival, produced in partnership with Battersea Arts Centre. He co-founded arts venue and E52’s base The Other Space (now Kardomah94). He founded the long-running theatre development night Scratch@Fruit. He was a founder member, in 2003, of Hull Truck’s Blockheads, which developed and explored skills in writing for the stage. He was a theatre critic for The Stage and whatsonstage.com, arts correspondent for Artscene and a regular contributor to The Big Issue in the North. He is currently involved in the development of several new pieces of work and working for First Story, whose programmes in secondary schools help young people find their voices and realise that their voices have value.