Guildhall School presents Change Makers

The creative and cultural industries are facing a time of unprecedented crisis and many professionals in this area have found themselves needing to acquire new skills, approaches, and strengths in order to thrive in these challenging times.

This autumn, as part of its commitment to leading and supporting cultural change within the sector, Guildhall School will host a series of free online participatory workshops for creative practitioners, led by a range of exciting and insightful artists and leaders. The twelve-week series, hosted on Zoom, will respond to the live challenges and changes facing everyone who works in the creative sector today.

Each week, a different facilitator, all of whom were recruited via an open call within the sector, will lead discussions on various topics. The first five, with free tickets available to book now, are:

Adaptability and Creativity with Emma Baim

Thursday 15 October, 6-8pm
Book a free place on this workshop

The world has changed over the past six months. The creative landscape is almost unrecognisable from twelve months ago. What does this mean for those making a living from the arts? We have to adapt. Or be left behind. In this session, participants will look at the skills they have, and will be enabled to realise the potential adaptability of those skills. Through hands-on and practical interactive exercises, participants will explore the present and the future reality of the creative industry.

Emma Baim is a self-employed Creative Practitioner with a background in Applied Theatre and Secondary Teaching. Over the past 20 years, she has performed in a number of regional and touring productions for The New Vic, Stoke; The New End, London; Art Rebel, LA; and The Carriageworks, Leeds as well as many studio theatres around the country.

Devising and Democracy with Julia Locascio

Thursday 29 October, 6-8pm
Book a free place on this workshop

What does it mean to truly collaboratively create in theatre? How do we keep the systems of oppression, biases, and hierarchies out of the rehearsal room? This workshop will draw from the artistic tools of Brecht, Pina Bausch, Kneehigh, Anne Bogart and the SITI Company, Gecko, and New York physical devising companies including The Wooster Group, Witness Relocation, Theatre Mitu, and The Team, and the social justice tools of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion training and We See You White American Theatre. Participants will explore and excavate assumptions around the creation of new work, the creation of rehearsal room cultures, and how we communicate with an audience. Participants will trace the direct line from craft -- how artistic decisions are made in (often less than) generative spaces -- to communication (and the frequent violence therein) to culture, and how those charged with the task of imagining our collective future can do so bravely and better.

Julia Locascio is a London-based American director and deviser of theatre and opera. She has directed new work in New York, Chicago, and Edinburgh, and has maintained large-scale productions as an Associate, including The American Clock (Old Vic), Salomé & Dido, Queen of Carthage (Royal Shakespeare Company) and The Kite Runner (Wyndham’s Theatre, West End).

Using digital technology to make new performance platforms with Marcus Romer

Thursday 12 November, 6-8pm
Book a free place on this workshop

Create and learn new skills ranging from working with cameras, Zoom and other conferencing platforms for live-streaming and capture, and explore new techniques for developing performances in new spaces , including mixed reality platforms and purpose-built online theatre and performance spaces in game environments. Romer and his company Mutiny have built a completely new theatre space and landscape world in the Roblox gaming engine, that can be used to explore, perform readings and showcase new work. Build an avatar and be part of the performing team or a member of the audience and see for yourself. Zoom integrated into the Roblox game world will enable interaction, design, movement, music and new text to be performed and shared.

Marcus Romer’s work has spanned three decades in theatre, film, television, and consultancy in the arts. He is currently a founding member of a new arts organisation, Mutiny, as well as working freelance as a director, theatre maker and arts consultant. Romer was the Artistic Director of the award-winning National Touring Theatre Company Pilot Theatre from 1993 to 2016.

Decolonising the Canon with Global Origins

Wednesday 25 November, 6-8pm
Book a free place on this workshop

Decolonising the Canon will introduce and define key terminology: canon, imperialism, cultural hegemony and orientalism, and create a basic framework to understand how some stories and writers become canonical and what that means. Participants will read a ‘canonical’ text in conversation with adaptations and reclamations of the text by Black, Indigenous and People of Colour (BIPOC), queer, and immigrant writers to discuss how the hegemony of single authorship can be broken by creating a diversity of stories and performance modes. For this session, participants will use a monologue (text or a filmed performance) from Shakespeare’s King Lear in conversation with monologues from Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman, Young Jean Lee’s Lear and Sarah Kane’s Blasted to discuss how identity manifests in theatre practice.

Global Origins is a platform and network for international and multicultural artists founded by Aneesha Srinivasan and Emma Jude Harris. Global Origins recently curated ARE WE THERE YET?, a festival of international art at the Bussey Building, and is currently curating a live-streamed evening of international theatre, film and performance art in-development, scheduled for the end of 2020.

Digital Socially Engaged Practice - Facilitation and Collaboration at a Distance with Varjack-Lowry

Thursday 10 December, 6-8pm
Book a free place on this workshop

How do we keep working together effectively when we are apart? This workshop will explore shifting and adapting collaborative and social practice in the wake of social distancing. Varjack-Lowry have adapted their collaborative practice in the wake of COVID-19 and have successfully completed two projects during the last six months, combining different methodologies to engage with participants, organisations and each other from afar. This workshop will offer ideas, activities and tools to develop participants’ own creative practice to enable them to collaborate effectively, remotely.

Varjack-Lowry is a collaboration between artists Paula Varjack and Chuck Blue Lowry that aims to develop a distinctive visual, theatrical & Participatory practice; merging skills derived from careers in filmmaking, theatre-making and participation. Varjack works in video, performance, theatre, spoken word & participation, and Lowry is an artist and filmmaker specialising in art as social practice, particularly intergenerational creativity

Further details on the remaining workshops in the Change Makers series, which will take place in 2021, to be announced.

For more information and how to sign up and book a free place, visit the Change Makers series page.