To our community of theatre makers and audience members - we cannot thank you enough for the support you have shown us. We feel held and seen and so much stronger as a result of your generosity - we now want to pay this amazing energy forwards.
Since writing our blog we have received donations, in part through the crowdfund which our wonderful friend Charlotte Bennett set up, as well as donors getting in touch directly. Allan Wlison who has donated to our crowd fundraisers before has given generously, and Slung Low have offered us a funded year long residency at The Holbeck which will include creative/organisational support.
With the combination of these funds we are going to
Create The Lockdown Album
We are interviewing people from 12 countries around the world about their experience of lockdown and the pandemic. We’ve spoken to people in China, India, UK, Italy, Greece, USA and Kenya, with more interviews planned to take place… the next stage of the process is using transcripts of these conversations to write an album of music. We’ve spoken to people with vastly different experiences of this global crisis, so maybe there is something in there that will resonate with what you’ve been feeling / going through.
You can hear extracts of those interviews as interludes in the album.
This will be available to stream for free. If you want to download the album and you can afford to donate, please do. Otherwise, we hope you enjoy. Maybe you’ve already donated, in which case THANK YOU and take the music for free.
Develop our Organisation
Lots of you got in touch to say - we think that the work you make has a community around it and is for a community. Don’t decide that you don’t fit into ‘Let’s Create’. Thank you so much for these conversations, they’ve been really interesting, nourishing, hopeful and have revealed to us that we do have a community.
We have also, as a result of the first blog, had a conversation with the arts council who have said that companies like RashDash do not need to change our reason for existence and that the work we make does still fit the criteria of the new strategy. We think it’s important to share this because we happened to write a blog at a moment where people wanted to have this conversation, and it’s meant we’ve had support that not everyone gets - and there are many of us who need / want it. So it’s important for us to tell companies and artists like us - we still fit.
But, of course, we can still do more.
We want to take the opportunity to think about how to be more useful to under-served communities. Thanks to the generous support of Slung Low who have provided us with a year long residency at The Holbeck, we are working on a model for how the company can continue to produce performance work - for the community that we have been building for the last ten years - whilst also developing a new side to our work which more directly engages audience and participants in harder to reach areas. We want to think more about how to use our skills and create projects so that we can be as useful as possible.
Start a mentoring / support scheme
We would like to support the work of womxn in cross art form / devised theatre. Maybe you are just graduating, maybe you are at the beginning of your career, maybe you are a mid-career actor who is interested in making the move into creating your own work. We might be going through a crisis, but there is room for you and we need you. RashDash has just experienced what the love, support and solidarity of a theatre community can feel like. We want more people to have access to this support.
We are offering 8 womxn, 2 years of mentoring support from RashDash.
4 directors / makers / performers / writers (within a devised or collaborative process) - These people will be supported by Helen or Abbi
2 composers / songwriters / performers - These people will be supported by Becky
2 freelance producers looking to facilitate and make experimental, cross art form work - These people will be supported by our producer, Andrew Hughes
NB - you don’t have to be all of these things at once, but we’re interested in hearing from people who work across roles and in collaboration with others.
We can talk to you about your work, any questions, fears, hopes you have about your work or your career. We can introduce you to other people we know - makers, producers, directors, venue programmers - who may be able to open doors for you that we can’t. We can offer regular chats and also more spontaneous conversations when emergencies come up. We can support you to problem solve. We will always try to help you work out what you want and to get that, rather than advising you on what you should do. We also want to know what you want this support process to be - is there something specific you know you want to ask for? Let us know and we’ll tell you what we can manage. We know communication has its limitations right now, but we hope this timeframe will be long enough so that we can start our conversations online or over the phone and meet in real life later down the line. We’d also love to do practical sessions and come to see your work!
We are particularly welcoming applications from trans and non binary people, disabled people, people from lower socio-economic backgrounds and people of colour. (If you would like a mentor in any of the above areas but you don’t think we’re the right people to mentor you, please let us know and we can try to find someone who you think would be more suitable. We can use our channels to call out for someone who can engage with you on your terms about your work.)
If this is you or anyone you know, or teach or know of - please send this to them. We are going to use all networks available to us, but it will be hard to reach new people without your help.
If you would like to be part of this group of people, please write us an email of no more than 500 words, and send it to info@rashdash.co.uk. Tell us about you, your work, your hopes for your work and what you’d like from us. Applicants must be 18+. The deadline for this is July 31st 2020.
New Project
Because it is feeling good at the moment to be transparent and to share our thought processes, we’re showing our working as we figure out how to continue to be creative and work collaboratively together at a distance.
https://www.rashdash.co.uk/new-project
This page is updated every weekday with new little offerings that we’re creating and sharing. We don’t know where it’s going…
Thanks for reading - please share with people you think might be interested.
Big love
xxx