December 05, 2022
Working in a Co-Creation Method with a Community
What does it mean to work with a community in a co-creation method? Why should you and why is Arts Council England pushing for it in their Let’s Create Strategy? I’ve had the pleasure of working with the communities of Slough in my role as Creative Producer for HOME Slough, a Creative, People and Places project for 15 months. It was my first time engaging with ‘community arts’, a term I’ve always found ...
December 13, 2020
How House Plants Helped Me Through 2020
We can all agree that the year that is 2020 has been one of the worst on record. For everyone, world-wide. 2020 has been shit. Ever the optimist though I'm going to channel my positivity and see the good that this year has brought me; my love of house plants. Early June and I'm furloughed from my job, initially 3 weeks and extended by a further 7. I'm one of the lucky ones, with the Government closing theatres across ...
How do you write an Arts Council England National Lottery Project Grants application? It's the golden question amongst artists and producers who rely upon support from ACE to make their work. Below you'll find some advice and top tips that I readily share with artists when thinking about applying for a grant from ACE. It's important to remember that, much like the title of the grant itself, the Project Grants scheme is ...
August 19, 2020
A Producing Manifesto
When it feels like your industry is in crisis, and you start to question why you work as a theatre producer, its important to go back to basics. If there is one thing I've taken away from the Culture Reset programme its understanding your core principles and owning them. Here I want to outline what my producing manifesto is, now and for the future. Transparency Producing is often seen as a mystical process, ...
June 26, 2020
Tea with Jake: Furlough Edition
Like many of my colleagues across theatre I am currently furloughed. With the news that this is being extended through the summer I want to return to something I have offered in previous years as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe; Tea with Jake. It proved successful in previous years for me to meet those in the industry who may need a cup of tea to talk about whatever was on their mind. No agenda, just tea and a ...
Last year I wrote a blogpost for Producers on how to survive the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, but after a tweet and thread from Ava Davies, it got me thinking further about how to keep healthy during the largest arts festival in the world. Here are some suggestions for keeping on top of things. By no means an exhaustive list: Pace Yourself The Edinburgh Festival Fringe has a natural flow to it. During the the opening ...
