Dance Cuts was a dance platform with workshops and panels. If you would like to find out more about the event, contact alice on alice@nuffieldtheatre.com  

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For the second time, the Nuffield Theatre produced a UK tour for our 2007/2008 International Fellows, Cupola Bobber, with their new piece, Way Out West, the Sea Whispered Me. Alice Booth, creative producer, put together four spring tour dates (at the Nuffield Theatre, Lancaster, 22nd and 23rd Feb, at the Greenroom, Manchester on 26th Feb, at Exeter Phoenix on the 2nd of March and at Chichester Showroom on the 4th March). Alice is currently booking tour dates for Autumn. For more information, see www.cupolabobber.com, or contact alice@nuffieldtheatre.com

Talking Birds ran a 5-day
intensive school in Morecambe's highly charged Winter Gardens. The week shared and exposed some of Talking Birds’ strategies for making site-based performance and the group experimented with some new ideas. Exploring both Victorian and contemporary theatre tricks, the week culminated in an immersive and evocative installation generating spooks and hauntings and things that go bump! Participants attended from a range of artforms including performance, visual art and sound/music.

An informal showing took place on 30th August 2009.  

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DIY 6: 2009

For the third year running, Nuffield Theatre Lancaster (with LANWest) is hosting the North West part of the DIY 6 programme – Professional development projects BY artists FOR artists that is specifically based in, and/or stimulates and benefits artists from the North West. All projects will take place in August and September 2009, and are aimed at both emergent and experienced practitioners. The DIY 6 programmes take many forms, including a 24-hour immersive experience, a 1000 mile bike ride, as well as a series of workshops, discussions, and encounters.

The proposal selected for the North West is by Lorena Rivero De Beer, and is called: Exercises to Activate the Political Imagination of the City Wanderer. It takes place from Wed-Sun 23-27 September in Liverpool, and is a collaborative workshop for artists who are interested in cultural politics and critical thinking to research and respond creatively to the city’s public sculptures. 11 people from across the UK and Ireland have been selected to take part. For more information, see www.thisisliveart.co.uk.

This project forms part of DIY 6, a Live Art Development Agency initiative developed in collaboration with Artsadmin, New Work Network, The Basement, Colchester Arts Centre, Nuffield Theatre & LANWest, and PLATFORM

For the first time, the Nuffield Theatre produced a UK tour for our 2007/2008 International Fellows. As a logical next step after their Fellowship, Alice Booth, Projects and Artist Support Officer, put together a seven-venue tour of the piece, ‘The Man Who Pictured Space from His Apartment’ by Chicagoan company Cupola Bobber. The tour took place at greenroom, Manchester, Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry, Arnolfini, Bristol, Exeter Phoenix, Exeter, Dartington Arts, Dartington, Workshop Theatre, Leeds and BAC, London. For more information, see www.cupolabobber.com, or contact alice@nuffieldtheatre.com

For the second year running, the Nuffield hosted the North West DIY programme, DIY 5 - professional development projects BY artists FOR artists across England. First Retreat then Advance!! was a cultural activist intervention into Liverpool08, Capitalism of Culture with The Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home during September 08. 'The Retreat' involved two days of critical self-reflection and a personalised mapping of Liverpool and its Capitalism of Culture. With all expenses paid, artist participants explored Liverpool’s high and low points, enjoyed a cultural night out, had a morning swim at Everton Leisure Centre, a fry-up at the local café and shared each others impressions. 'The Advance' took place a week later, in the form of cultural activist interventions in the city. See www.thisisliveart.co.uk/prof_dev/diy/diy5_report.html for full DIY 5 report.

DIY is a LADA initiative developed in collaboration with Arnolfini, Theatre Bristol, Artsadmin, Colchester Arts Centre, Fierce Earth, New Work Network, China Plate, Nuffield Theatre Lancaster and LANWest.

Our 3rd annual International Artists Summer School took place at Lanternhouse International, Ulverston in July 2008. Cupola Bobber are Chicago-based duo Stephen Fiehn and Tyler Myers. Recently International Artists’ Fellows at the Nuffield, the pair made their last trip as part of the Fellowship to run a summer school for artists from all disciplines. The summer school enabled 10 artists (including performance poet Rommi Smith, live artist Stacey Makishi and dance artist Simone Kenyon) to explore devising strategies for generating dynamic intersections of meaning in the live presentation of text and image.

Cupola Bobber are the Chicago based experimental theatre duo Tyler Myers and Stephen Fiehn. Over the last 9 years, Cupola Bobber has created work using a slow process of collaboration, research and rehearsal. They mix basic materials with homespun engineering, resulting in delicate work that surprises viewers with its detail, humour and care. 
The company have just completed a year-long International Fellowship at the Nuffield Theatre, spending three blocks of time developing a new piece and extending their links with promoters across the UK and Europe. Their show The Man Who Pictured Space From His Apartment (TMWPSFHA) was a big success in our Autumn 2007 season, and the company showed work in progress material created during their Nuffield residency at the Goat Island event in March 08. They also ran our 3rd annual artists summer school, at Lanternhouse International in Ulverston (see details above). A UK tour of TMWPSFHA has just been completed and was produced by the Nuffield Theatre. See ARCHIVE SUPPORT ITEMS.

5 NW based artists/companies - Levantes Dance, Neil Callaghan, Simon Bowes, Simone Kenyon and Christine Entwisle - were challenged to create new works in response to a set of rules set by Nuffield curators Matt Fenton and Alice Booth. The rules were given to the artists for the first time on 31st March 2008, and they had a month in which to respond to them in the form of new pieces of work. The results were shown at the Nuff Said Festival on 25-26 April 08.

The rules: Spend 24 hours awake in Blackpool / Create a structure for your work that is new to you / The body must be contained or bound / Bring the outside in.

This project is a collaboration between the Nuffield Theatre, Brighton-based organisation Rules and Regs, and Live Art North West. See www.rulesandregs.org for more info. Rules and Regs events have taken place across the UK over the past year, and a finale event takes place at Bluecoat, Liverpool on 15th Nov 2008.

Making Space was the second in a series of Nuffield Theatre bursary schemes for artists based in the North West. The first, Making Money, led to the development of 5 new performance works. The Nuffield challenged North West based artists to develop new project ideas that would take advantage of the Nuffield's very large stage (400m2). Three projects were selected for bursaries, and work in progress presentations took place in August and September 07: 'The Body Project' (Tara Brandel, Wendy Hesketh & Steve Lewis); 'Farewell' (Simon Bowes) and 'Sonic Nuffield' (Antti Sakari Saario).

All Maps Welcome took place in the summer of 2007. It was a promenade piece made by regional emerging company, Doldrum Theatre, in collaboration with a group of local and regional artists. One audience member at a time was taken on a journey around the city of Lancaster and passed from ‘guide’ to ‘guide’ (with six ‘guides’ in all). Each performer or ‘guide’ had a unique voice, and offered a different view of the city.

In 2007, the DIY 4 projects were 'UnKnown Terra-tories' (12 artists interrogated their practice while walking in the Lake District, led by artists Neil Callaghan and Simone Kenyon) and 'Live Art Campers!' (Country walks and sitting around the fire interspersed with professional development sessions led by artists FrenchMottershead). See LADA website for full report and information: www.thisisliveart.co.uk

DIY is a LADA initiative developed in collaboration with Arnolfini, Theatre Bristol, Artsadmin, Colchester Arts Centre, Fierce Earth, New Work Network, China Plate, Nuffield Theatre Lancaster and LANWest.

Between December 2006 and February 2007, Alice Booth, Projects and Artist Support Officer, facilitated a Peer to Peer Network, which was part of the Be Creative Project, Lancaster University. The Network was financed by monies provided by Lancaster University from the North West Development Agency (NWDA). The objective of the network was to bring together up to 8 representatives from creative businesses in Lancashire, in order to build professional confidence and address some of the hurdles that individuals and small enterprises face in the increasingly competitive creative industries sector.

In August 2006, our summer school was led by Chicago-based company Goat Island. 27 artists from the UK, Europe and China spent a week working with this influential company exploring collaborative processes, performance writing and installation. The week ended with a series of showings, and was followed by the company spending a further two weeks in residence in the Nuffield working on their final professional show which will tour internationally in 2007/08. "This was the most transformative and rich workshop I have ever participated in. It has been a privilege. Thank you!" Artist Participant

In Winter 2005 the Nuffield made 5 ‘Making Money’ bursaries to individual artists (from 57 applications) for the research and development of new work. We picked artists from Lancaster and the wider region. We picked a diverse range of projects that had clear objectives and inspiring ideas, from emerging artists to more established artists who wanted to work in new ways. Selected artists: Rachel Riggs (Preston); Sonia Hughes (Manchester); Krissi Musiol and Jenny Lawson (Manchester); Christine Entwisle (Ulverston); Jenny McCabe (Lancaster). All presented the early stages of their work at Nuff Said II on February 18th 2006.

In summer 2005, Mole Wetherell, Artistic Director of Reckless Sleepers, led a two-week summer school for emerging artists. The fortnight was an intensive introduction to collaborative and site-specific performance, and was attended by 12 regional artists and recent graduates. The event culminated in a performance in the Dukes Theatre’s Youth Arts Centre. Participants’ quotes included:“it was great to concentrate on process rather than being obsessed with making a show” “I shall devise differently as a result of this” “it made me think about alternative ways to reach audiences”

This event, in Feb 2005, focused on bridging the gap between training and the profession for emerging artists. We presented a range of emerging work alongside discussions and presentations from experts in the field. This included shows from Deer Park, Demonstrate, Small Change, Attic People, Wooden Bench and Yoram Mosenzon, as well as sessions from funding bodies, HE institutions and arts venues. For more information, contact Alice Booth, Projects and Artist Support Officer on 01524 592994, alice@nuffieldtheatre.com Download report on the event here.

In 2005 and 2006, the Nuffield received £10,000 in funding from Arts Council England for the Time and Space project which allows experimental artists with a proven track record the time to develop new work within the Higher Education system. The selected artist was Kazulko Hohki, during her residency, she worked with Mark Whitelaw, Tom Morris and Company Brian, as well as presenting her Evidence for the Existence of Borrowers show in the Nuffield in Autumn 2005. David Micklem (ACE project lead) said: “Kazuko's report is a wonderfully positive read. I'm delighted and I think ACE will learn much from this in terms of our on-going commitment to experimentation without the pressure of production”. David Micklem, ACE