Incubate/Propagate: Towards Alternative Models for Artist Development in Theatre and Performance

This network seeks to address well-documented concerns that the cultural and creative industries, and the performing arts in particular, are 'increasingly dominated by those from privileged class origins' (O Brien, Cultural Trends, 25:2, 2016, p123). Specifically, the network will address the lack of access to professional development support available to emerging theatre artists from outside of the graduate community (ACE, 2016, p91). The over-riding research question will be:

How can the producer-led platforms for professional artist development that are currently targeted at the graduate community be extended or diversified to better serve non-graduate emerging artists?

The network seeks to respond to this question by fostering innovative collaboration between constituencies that are rarely brought into conversation: independent producers who are key players in the selection, development and profiling of early career theatre artists to funding bodies, and academics in theatre and cultural industries disciplines whose work addresses social exclusion, inequality and applied or participatory art and theatre practice in the context of socio-economic deprivation. While there are significant bodies of academic research into theatre practice in the contexts of applied, community and activist theatre, these discourses are most often driven by an exploration of the social and individual benefits of participation in theatre and performance for those individuals and communities taking part, rather than an examination of strategies, platforms and networks that participants may access to embark on a professional theatre-making career. This research network aims to bring experts in precisely these fields into conversation with those independent producers who have the strongest track records in developing emerging artists in order to inspire thinking around how to build bridges from one context to the other.

The network will bring these two constituencies, together with arts funding and policy officers, into conversation to develop new theoretical insights, practical strategies, partnership models and grant planning. This network activity will thus enable academics and theatre producers to share good practice and principles and collaborate together on new work development programmes that are designed to broaden the socio-economic base of the theatre-making profession. Each workshop will address a different pathway to increasing socio-economic diversity within artist development structures: the first examining how 'risk' might be mitigated, differently understood, or productively exploited, in the context of funding the development of artists and aesthetics that fall outside of the market norm; the second asking if productively troubling the distinctions between professional / emerging / community / amateur in the conceptualisation of artist development programmes might encourage broader access to development schemes; and the third examining how different international models of new work production and artist development might offer fresh perspectives on the UK context. The network will thus set directions for future innovative research in both industry and academic contexts from which arts and cultural industries academics, producers, funders, artists and the theatre ecology more widely will benefit.

The primary material dissemination of the research beyond the workshop activity will be a special issue of an open-access, refereed journal edited by the Project Team (PT), and published by Studies in Theatre and Performance. This will include an introductory co-authored article by the PT and draw on papers presented at the workshops, and additional shorter contributions by participants reflecting on the research generated throughout the workshops. An industry-focused report will also be produced by the PT with recommendations for future Arts Council policy and strategic priorities.

This network aims to enable academic research to lead and influence the market, and to offer correctives and alternatives to its current, implicitly exclusionary, practices. To this end it has pathways to significant impact built into the research activity throughout. It is designed to enable knowledge co-production and exchange through collaborative and in-depth exploration of the research question by international researchers, theatre producers and UK arts funders and policy makers whose various fields of expertise will be recognised, valued and engaged in pursuit of the project's aims.

Participating Producers will benefit from two direct kinds of impact: 1) an extension of their current networks through building lasting partnerships with academic partners; and 2) an extension of their thinking, benefiting from the insights of scholars who are international experts in their field. The space to think critically is often unavailable to those too immersed in the immediate challenges of getting to the next project to be able to make time to grapple with the difficult questions of diversity and access. Participation in this network will thus address the lack of continuing professional development (CPD) for producers, which was noted as one of the most concerning consequences of the economic precarity of the role, both throughout the consultation exercise conducted prior to this application and in the ACE 2016 theatre report. Both types of impact, in the longer term, will lead to the development of partnership projects both directly arising from this research and beyond its immediate remit, and will ensure the producers' increased capacity to deliver larger, more research-informed projects that can attract a diversity of funding in their future portfolios.

The Independent Producer Community: Members of the wider producing and theatre-making field will also benefit from the insights and outcomes of the research. These will be primarily accessed throughout the term of the project via the website, which will contain podcasts of selected papers and panels from the workshops. Subsequently, producers will be able to access all articles in the open-access journal, which will also contain a summary of the industry report. Links to the website at key points throughout the project will be disseminated through existing producer-led networks, such as the UK producers' Facebook page (4000+ members), as well as via more widespread social media feeds, and digital networks of arts organisations, as detailed in the Pathways to Impact section.
Funders/Policy Makers: Those participating in the workshop will gain additional insight from academic researchers' critical overview of the context in which they work, which might offer different perspectives on their field. Funders and policy makers more widely will be given access to the insights and outcomes of the project through the project website as detailed above, and through a comprehensive industry report that will include links to the open-access journal.

Tomorrow's Artists and Audiences:
The key long-term beneficiaries of the project will be theatre-makers from lower-socio-economic backgrounds who will be able to access enhanced opportunities to participate in the theatre-making sector. A greater diversity of theatre-makers is also likely to diversify the forms of new theatre and performance of the future, both aesthetically and thematically. This, in turn, will impact on the capacity of new theatre to attract a greater number of audiences from lower socio-economic backgrounds who can then benefit from increased engagement in new theatre and performance events.