A n o t h e r R o ut e
Another Route was an artistic fellowship that enabled a group of 12 artists and companies working with performance (selected by application) to embark upon a journey to internationalise their creative practice through a curated 18-month programme which included:
1. Mentoring by an internationally experienced UK-based mentor.
2. Participation in three lab events, one residential lab at Hawkwood Centre for Future Thinking in Stroud (UK), one at D-CAF (Downtown Contemporary Arts Festival) in Cairo (Egypt) and a final lab in Ghent and Brussels (Belgium). These were opportunities to explore other artistic cultures and meet a range of different artists and programmers.
3. A dialogue and exchange process with international colleagues whose skills and knowledge are relevant to the participating artist/ company’s practice.
4. Residency time with international partners for each artist/company.
5. A seed commission supported by Jerwood Arts.
Another Route was designed by a new consortium of independent artists and companies from across the UK who brought to the project a variety of different experiences of working internationally across a broad range of contexts, not always with formal institutional support. The Another Route programme and selection process was managed by the Programme Producer and Assistant Producer with teams from Artsadmin, Total Theatre and Forest Fringe.
For every company involved in the organising consortium, the experience of connecting with other artistic communities and cultures, meeting and collaborating with people very different to themselves transformed the way they think about live performance and their place in the world. The aim of Another Route was to share that experience and support other artists who desire the same opportunity to begin re-imagining how they make their work and who they are able to make it with.
This publication features short Q&As on internationalising performance practices with some fellows of the Another Route programme, accompanied by photographs from the labs and residencies. The Q&As were conducted under different circumstances and at different times, some in person, others over email and voice notes. Each Q&A centres on three key questions:
The creation of this publication serves dual purposes: firstly, to record a moment in each artists’ journey and in the Another Route programme, and secondly, to prompt and provide inspiration to practitioners outside of the programme who are venturing into similar thought spaces.
ALISA OLEVA treats the city as her studio and urban life as material, considering issues of urban choreography and urban archeology, traces and surfaces, borders and inventories, intervals and silences, passages and cracks. Her projects have manifested as a series of interactive situations, performances, movement scores, personal and intimate encounters, parkour, walkshops, and audio walks. olevaalisa.com
DEMI NANDHRA is a neurodivergent artist and writer based in Birmingham. She makes and curates both solo & collaborative performances, live art, theatre with a focus on Mental Health, Care & Trauma. deminandhra.co.uk
FIGS IN WIGS are a UK based female led performance company. For the last 10 years we have been making semi-epic, genre-bending performance that sits somewhere in between live art, music, theatre, comedy and dance. We make work collaboratively with a DIY approach - we write, direct, choreograph, compose and perform all of our creative output. Our work is recklessly joyful, highly visual and unashamedly revels in tackiness and trashiness. With an irreverent sense of humour we use puns, bad jokes and pop culture references to charm and disarm audiences of all ages. figsinwigs.com
GILLIE KLEIMAN works with and in dance and choreography, creating performances, texts, events and pedagogical encounters. Gillie’s work has a persistent interest in both the figure and the activity of the nonprofessional, and many of the projects have involved participation of non-professional collaborators or of the audience. In 2020, Gillie initiated a new cycle of thinking and working about fat and fatness. gilliekleiman.com
HUGH MALYON is a disabled performer exploring processes between theatre, dialogue, live art & digital media, with locality & lived experience informing rich collaborations. Hugh directly challenges categorisation, re-writing notions of what is disabling about being disabled. Shifting perceptions of disability towards positive identity drives his creative work, from the mundane to the theatrical. Hugh invites audiences into arrestive dialogues, laced with humour, discomfort & commonality. He flows between live & digital space, combining workshop & live devising to expand language around disabled bodies as canvases/ lenses of, beauty, care, empathy, voice amplification, process & protest. hughmalyon.live
JAMAL GERALD is an artist and writer based in Leeds. His work is conversational, unapologetic and provocative with a social message, intending to take up space as a Black queer person. Jamal has undertaken research in Montserrat and Trinidad and Tobago through support from Arts Council England. In 2023, he did an artist residency with RISCO festival in Sao Paulo, Brazil. His work has also been shown at Kampnagel, New Performance Turku,
The Fellows
SPILL Festival, Royal Court, Battersea Arts Centre and the Barbican. Jamal is a Recipient of a Jerwood Arts’ Live Work Fund Award (2021). jamalgerald.com
NATALIE RECKERT + MARK MORREAU: Digital Artist Mark Morreau had a circus career spanning three decades, which now informs his current work. Natalie Reckert is a circus maker integrating robotic movement, spoken word and handbalancing to create full length shows since 2007. Natalie Inside Out is a unique collaboration between world-
class hand-balancer Natalie Reckert and digital artist Mark Morreau, using technology and video projections to turn our conventional ideas of circus upside down and inside out. Literally. Fusing circus and interactivity to examine the inner workings of the body, Natalie and Mark playfully investigate the relationship between the actual, and the mediatised body. Exploring the intersection of live acrobatic performance, close up video and spoken word, they embed movement on stage into projected landscapes on screen, to reveal the underlying mechanics, emotions and motivations of the circus body. natalieinsideout.com
REVEL
PUCK CIRCUS: Based in East London, The Revel Pucks creative output is based in the belief that to create work of universal appeal does not mean a sacrifice of artistic integrity. Touring in big top tents, outdoors and in untraditional spaces, the Revel Pucks are striving to make and take their work to everyone, from everywhere. revelpuckcircus.com
RHIANNON ARMSTRONG is an interdisciplinary artist who brings the audience-focus of a theatre background to work that has recently included radio documentary, sensory performance, and digital art interventions like The International Archive of Things Left Unsaid and The Slow GIF Movement. Rhiannon’s practice is a form of deep listening that often results in gently interactive works made with unfiltered audiences in mind. Driven by collaboration, context, and an activist impulse, these are often designed as interventions in public space, for both the built environment and online. In recognition of this inclusive practice Rhiannon was awarded the Adrian Howells Award for Intimate Performance (2019). rhiannonarmstrong.net
SH!T THEATRE are Rebecca Biscuit & Louise Mothersole. They make politically-engaged performance art using song, humour, pop culture & multimedia in a unique live documentary style. They research, write and perform their own work. They’ve been researching, writing, performing and drinking together since 2010 and have toured to some places and won some awards. shittheatre.co.uk
VERITY STANDEN is a composer, director, performer and choir leader. Her work focuses on the human voice - gathering people together to sing, and exploring different ways that people can experience music. Verity likes to play with vocal music in ways that ask us to listen differently. Her projects take a range of forms - concerts, theatre pieces, films, installations, community events - but they always start with the voice. veritystanden.com
YOLANDA MERCY is a BAFTA Nominee and Award Winning British Nigerian Writer and Performer for Screen, Stage and Audio. Previously named an “Artist to Watch” by the British Council, part of the BFI x BAFTA mentoring scheme under the guidance of Anne Mensah and a winner of the prestigious channel 4 Playwright award, Yolanda is carving out a career across a variety of mediums. Her writing has featured in Huffington Post and she is a published author with Bloomsbury Books for her award winning play Quarter Life Crisis. yolandamercy.com
INTRODUCTION
JEMIMA YONG - Creative Documentarian
In 2022, friends sent me the Another Route call out for “England-based performance makers to internationalise their creative practice through an 18-month programme of events and residences taking place across the world.
... The artist/company will be able to demonstrate that international dialogue and exchange is important to them. Beyond having an interest in simply touring their work internationally, they must have a genuine curiosity about other cultures and other approaches to making performance...
They should also show a curiosity about the political dimension of international working - what it means when you and your work are part of an international cultural exchange, and how to be sensitive to the context in which that exchange is taking place... We are particularly keen to support artists/companies whose access to international opportunities has up to now been very limited.”
I wondered how I could engage with this programme... Compelled to understand the world that I live in with more nuance and curious about how the performance I make lands in different contexts, I’d imagined internationalising my practice as touring existing work.
I have never taken performances far outside of the places they were made. I don’t have access to artist networks outside the countries I’ve lived in. But because I have lived in more than one country, I have connections to other places. This made me feel - to some extent - inherently international and uneasy with the idea of representing a single nation. I decided not to apply as a fellow.
Months later, I was hired as a photographer for a oneoff job to document the first day that the Another Route organisers, fellows and mentors convened. I found that experience so thought provoking and generative that I said to Dan, the programme producer: “I’d love to continue visiting the project if there is scope for an artist documentarian to do this.” I didn’t know if anything would come of it, but the team took me up on my offer!
The perspective of a Creative Documentarian was one that I found incredibly valuable. Using photography and audio recording as my primary tools, I was present for one day in Stroud (UK), one week in Cairo (Egypt) and two days in Brussels (Belgium). I found my place as neither artist fellow, nor artist organiser but artist on the periphery, thinking with the Another Route fellows and around the project more generally. Here is a constellation of memories and thoughts from my time on the project:
1
In parallel with all that is different, I pay attention to the cornerstones of physical and process-based similarities that hold up the possibilities for practices to cross borders: the black box studio, the institutions via which programming decisions get made, the “festival” presentation format, the power dynamics between institutions and artists...
2
From speaking with the Another Route fellows I realise just how differently each artist thinks about “internationalising”. The reasons to engage with practices and cultures outside of one’s own are myriad. It could include seeking specific expertise; finding other places of belonging; growing economic prospects...
It’s not just about socialising a piece of work, it can also be about sharing a method, an idea, creating an exchange or collaboration, doing a residency, engaging in translation and sometimes you can do this without physically leaving the place you’re in! Revel Puck Circus used their residency to host artists from other countries to come to them for example. This also makes me think of forms that can bypass borders like performance via radio, print material and the internet.
3
I remember attending an event in Cairo called “Artist Mobility: Touring Arab Artists Abroad” expecting a starting panel of local artists but instead we were met with European promoters and council representatives on stage. Uncomfy.
Later, a local artist spoke about their desire to tour the region outweighing the resources and infrastructure present to do so. A sentiment others in the room resonated with. They said that there are far more opportunities to tour Europe than around the African continent itself. European programmers have a specific
idea of what kind of work they want from Egypt, and for a long time, unless it was linked to the revolution, there was little interest in presenting. This reminds me of what it sometimes feels like to be a non-white person making work in the UK and the feeling that institutions are not interested in platforming what I make unless it is specifically about my race and the culture associated with it.
I think about how the tastes and views of programmers in one place can influence the work that gets made in another. This gatekeeping mirrors historical power dynamics between nations.
4
I become acutely aware that a conversation around internationalisation cannot take place without a conversation about foreign policy, history, borders, nation states, passports and mobility.
What artist-led systems exist specifically to think about these dynamics with a goal of undermining them?
5
There is a moment, again in Cairo, when the floor is open at an event, and one of the Another Route fellows shares some reflections and guidance to other artists in the room about the experience of touring within the UK:
“Touring in the UK is systematically harmful. The more marginalised you are, the more harm you might receive. Be mindful of the venues and programmes you partner with... ask those venues and programmes to partner you with local artists. Those local artists can give you a run down of what might happen and they can be an advocate for you. It’s quite insidious and there can be quite a bit of exploitation... the more marginalised you are, if you’ve got intersectional
identities...There is opportunity but opportunity doesn’t negate harm. So my recommendation is to really connect with artists that are local.”
A generous act of solidarity. This sparked the question about peer-to-peer systems that help practices cross cultures. What would internationalisation be like if it took a journey that negated typical power structuresthe promoter, the institution, the council, the venue, the border?
How might resources be shared and divested across peer-to-peer networks? How do we work through the structures so we can show our work elsewhere? How could artist-led systems challenge international structures linked to states, economic exchange and institutions?
6
Reflecting on my experience of Another Route, I have more questions than answers. When I think about what internationalising my practice could mean, I now think about porousness and coalition. What does it mean to look across to our peers (rather than up towards institutions or governments) to create, find friendships and collaborate?
What conditions are necessary to do this linking and nurturing work? What does it mean to be working in London, one of the most internationally diverse cities in the world and how do I explore the possibilities of internationalising my practice from here? What happens when my practice wants to connect across time, space and territories but does not want to be part of a 'national’ project?
It has been an honour to have had this experience alongside a group of critical, intelligent, intuitive artists also trying to find a way.
+ Based in London + Residency in Taiwan and
Alisa Oleva
WHAT IS INTERNATIONALISING YOUR PRACTICE?
For me, it means sending more limbs or more hands into different places. It doesn’t necessarily even mean going to places, but it means being in touch with what is happening in other places and other contexts. For me personally, that is about being connected to what’s happening on the ground through grassroots artists, not through organisations. Finding those possibilities to connect to peers, who are working on the ground - grassroots, artist-run spaces- sometimes they are not as visible as institutions, and they often don’t have a fancy website.
So then it’s about how you find those people, and how to be aware of what we are all doing and be aware of each other. So, yeah, I really realised that for me, it’s about that, because I know my community in where I am and in certain other places, which I’m connected to. But when you arrive, or when you reach out to a new place, what is that moment of: how do you actually reach out to those communities, which are probably not the ones on the programme, or on the websites?
I know how to do it in my context. We have different social media groups. For example, before I travel somewhere in Russia and Ukraine I go to contact my Facebook network and there are these strange groups you can find but I really don’t know how you do it in other contexts.
HAVE YOU FOUND ANY BEGINNINGS OF WAYS TO FIND OUT?
Yes, the guide. Usually, with my work, I actually prefer the first few days not to be guided or like not to be taken anywhere. So I have some time to just feel the place, and that’s important, but I realised that like, if you are reaching to like these very new places, the role of the guide is really crucial... And I probably will leave it with this word, though it might change.
I’m really lucky that I know someone who will become this guide for me in the context of Taiwan. I don’t think I would be able to do anything just on my own. The role of someone else is really important, that someone who becomes the transmitter, the guide and the entry point, something that starts to make this tissue that can then become something else. That’s been a big realisation.
WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO SHARE WITH AN ARTIST WHO HAS AN ART PRACTICE THAT THEY WOULD LIKE TO START INTERNATIONALISING?
I feel like something that is happening on our trips [on Another Route]... I’ve had experiences like this without going anywhere... These have been schools or like online things, actually, which basically allowed me to meet all these incredible peers. And I can even give a specific example because it’s ongoing, so probably people can apply and it’s free. It’s called Artists For Artists, AFA, and they run schools around quite political themes. I think it’s once a year, but basically, it’s about peer-to-peer knowledge. And there are several artists, who are mentors on the programme. And then there is a cohort. It’s online, it’s not very long, probably four days or like four sessions over a certain time. And it’s all about us meeting, sharing practice, and having that mentor presence as well to facilitate it. That has been mind blowing in terms of understanding what is happening in other places and I’ve met incredible people from the Philippines and Tunisia. It almost surprised me, but we really didn’t need to go anywhere.
And so now, I feel like it could be a starting point that I could reach out to those people because they already know. So yeah, the advice is that you do not necessarily need to immediately go. Yeah, that probably it’s about some of those peer-to-peer structures, that already exist, where you can enter and already meet these incredible people who are turning things around in different places.
WHAT DO YOU GET FROM INTERNATIONALISING YOUR PRACTICE?
I was at this conference where this woman was talking about the hyperlocal, and how it is important. And there was this really cool artist, the only artist of colour on the panel who said: yeah, hyperlocal, but also, hyperlocal can be almost the tool to not make you feel solidarity any further. It’s basically I think,
for me, it’s definitely about this. I don’t know if solidarity is the only word but it’s one of the words. It’s about understanding this zoom-in zoom-out, because my work is quite like zoomed-in, it’s about the every day and the very personal things within one’s radius. But then like, I find it’s really, really crucial to then be able to zoom out and to make those portals and those connections and those understandings of what is happening in other contexts. And that’s why it’s not necessarily even about going. But it’s about the perspective and the possibility to not just stay within a setting, it can be a political tool as well as a zooming in, zooming out.
“So yeah, the advice is that you do not necessarily need to immediately go. Yeah, that probably it’s about some of those peerto-peer structures, that already exist, where you can enter and already meet these incredible people who are turning things around in diferent places.”
Demi Nandhra
Ask lots of questions to those you know who have an international practice. Especially those who have similar practice/style of work/ approach.
WHAT IS INTERNATIONALISING YOUR PRACTICE?
Expanding my context and knowledge to support and nurture my practice in a meaningful way. Finding new ways to adapt and support an arts practice.
WHAT DO YOU GET FROM INTERNATIONALISING PRACTICE?
Hopefully new opportunities and adventures. Expand ideas and collaborations. Find inspiration.
+ Based in Birmingham + Residency in Vancouver and Toronto, Canada
WHAT IS INTERNATIONALISING YOUR PRACTICE?
Internationalising our practice means something very simple and is a straightforward idea to us; to take our work overseas! And make strong partnerships with international venues. However we have always faced difficulty in doing so, perhaps because there are “too many of us” or perhaps we just didn’t know the right people to schmooze? Thanks to the Another Route process, internationalising our practice has become a little bit easier - we now have our collective foot in Kampnagel, Hamburg, an invite to the Under the Radar Symposium in NY and a real life booking at Teatro do Bairro Alto in Lisbon.
WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO SHARE WITH AN ARTIST WHO HAS AN ART PRACTICE THAT THEY WOULD LIKE TO START INTERNATIONALISING?
Ask for help! Reach out to experienced and well travelled artists, producers and venues and ask them to tell you how they did it. Attend international festivals (funds dependant of course) and see what they programme and if your work would be a good fit! Don’t be scared to reach out to venues, but also don’t be offended if no one replies - it’s a verrrrrry slow game. Don’t worry about changing your art in order to try and appeal to certain venues - you won’t be right for everyone (just like life in general). One great YES is worth more than 50 maybes.
WHAT DO YOU GET FROM INTERNATIONALISING YOUR PRACTICE?
We get to perform, which is our favourite thing to do, to new people. We get to see & explore new places and discover the way art sectors operate in different countries (spoiler alert - it’s usually better than in the UK).
When we performed Astrology Bingo at Kampnagel it gave us a huge confidence boost knowing that our sense of humour and aesthetic translated really well to a German speaking audience.
Figs in Wigs:
Image of Figs in Wigs about to do Astrology BingoKampnagel, Hamburg.
+ Based in London and Manchester + Residency in Hamburg, Germany
Ray Gammon, Suzanna Hurst, Sarah Moore, Rachel Porter and Alice Roots.
WHAT IS INTERNATIONALISING YOUR PRACTICE?
I want this to be about how artists situate themselves within global concerns, take an interest in and responsibility for the interaction between their work and other sites, situations and communities that are elsewhere. I also want it to be about making proper friendships as well as strategic business relationships and thinking through and mobilising the potentials of artistic friendship over countries or continents.
WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO SHARE WITH AN ARTIST WHO HAS AN ART PRACTICE THAT THEY WOULD LIKE TO START INTERNATIONALISING?
I would invite the artist to consider:
a) what they think about and want to do in relation to climate crisis through and with internationalisation
b) what they think about and want to do in relation to coloniality, colonisation and imperialism, especially if they’re from or benefiting from the resources from a colonial power (like me).
WHAT DO YOU GET FROM INTERNATIONALISING YOUR PRACTICE?
I don’t really know. I work quite a bit with international collaborators from my bedroom in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, and I enjoy the exchange. I like going to other places and talking with others about our lives and work, mostly because it helps me remember how non-universal my experience is, which gives me hope that things are more malleable than they seem.
i ll i e
Kleim
+
Based in Newcastle upon Tyne + Residency in Japan and USA
“I want this to be about how artists situate themselves within global concerns, take an interest in and responsibility for the interaction between their work and other sites, situations and communities that are elsewhere.”
Hugh Malyon
WHAT IS INTERNATIONALISING YOUR PRACTICE?
Taking your work and process to totally new and exciting contexts, indeed, taking you and your practice to new communities, spaces and cultures.
Realising that we are all connected in really meaningful ways and your struggles and privileges are shared throughout the globe. It is giving back and taking, in terms of having more resources, support network and opportunities to connect with audiences. Whilst having different kinds of barriers and logistical headaches to overcome. International collaborations are a huge opportunity to learn and practice, like everything with working across borders.
From the UK, I think it is about being humble about the resources available and the value of the arts and culture in Europe but the lack of infrastructure in different settings... A recognition that the UK is progressive and regressive at the same time - the squirming feeling of Britain forcing art on other cultures is still there and it is about staying true to your values as artists and rewriting narratives around meaningful cultural exchange. Also, it’s about having an amazing, joyful and rich journey, meeting beautiful people and learning.
WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO SHARE WITH AN ARTIST WHO HAS AN ART PRACTICE THAT THEY WOULD LIKE TO START INTERNATIONALISING?
Share time and space with amazing artists who have worked across borders.
Always ask yourself why. Even if the answer is: Because there is more money over there to support my practice, be honest. From the UK, the historical responsibility of recognising colonial scars is vital but also do not shoulder that massive elephant all on your own. Just like here, there are lots and lots of people wanting to support you.
Be mindful of how much a meal or a night’s stay is in different countries.
As an independent artist/company, you’re probably used to going rough/doing all-nighters/working for less/sleeping on coaches etc, honour that experience... is it viable for you (and the wider artistic workforce) to keep doing that or are you at the stage where half decent conditions are needed. Like everything, these questions are magnified 10x when thinking about internationalising.
Your work is good, your practice is exciting and meaningful, and you totally deserve to be on the international stage!
WHAT DO YOU GET FROM INTERNATIONALISING YOUR PRACTICE?
A more rounded, but still developing, understanding of our world. Confidence in that there are platform/communities/ support networks out there, even if the UK political landscape continues to squeeze the Arts and Culture and things look bleak, light and support is out there.
Internationalising my practice has given me unique friends and partners that push my understanding of my own practice and process as a whole.
New experiences that are so mind blowing and yet, quite literally, are all in a day’s work!
“A recognition that the UK is progressive and regressive at the same time - the squirming feeling of Britain forcing art on other cultures is still there and it is about staying true to your values as artists and rewriting narratives around meaningful cultural exchange.”
+ Based in Paignton
+ Residency in Norway and London, UK
Jamal Gerald
WHAT IS INTERNATIONALISING YOUR PRACTICE?
It means I can scale up and be more ambitious with my approach when making performance. It means I can get out of the UK, even if it’s for a brief period.
It means I can think more broadly instead of in a very typical British way, even though I don’t think I think in a British way, but in a sense I do because I live in Britain. So even in terms of British storytelling that is so ingrained in the art scene. In my experience, when I’ve wanted to push back against that, there’s always the question of “What story do you want to tell?”, “Who’s the character?”
And I’m like: No, this is not what the work is exploring. And then I come here [Belgium], and they really embrace chaos, and are not always interested in the conventional ways of making performance.
WHAT WILL YOUR PRACTICE GAIN FROM THAT GESTURE OF TAKING IT TO PLACES WHERE MAYBE THE CONVENTIONS ARE DIFFERENT OR MORE EMBRACING OF CHAOS?
I’m currently making a body of work exploring African diaspora religions through a queer and pop culture lens. So with a lot of these African diaspora religions, for example, the Jumbie dance, going back to the word 'chaos’, I think, in a Western context, mostly Britain, that chaos wouldn’t be received most positively, because it’s not controlled. It’s not structured. But if I were to do it in
Montserrat (even though in Montserrat, the Jumbie dance is outlawed) I think there’d be some people who would embrace the chaos, because during the Jumbie dance, for example, if someone was rolling around the floor and screaming, because they’ve been taken over by a Jumbie (spirit), no one would react because it’s normal. But in Britain, that wouldn’t be normal.
So I think, if I were to take it to somewhere like Montserrat or Brazil, I think there’ll be more of an acceptance, and I wouldn’t have to worry about if people 'got it’ or not. I feel like I probably wouldn’t have to do as much explaining as I have to do in the UK. But yeah, I think that I want to connect more with cultures that already get it or if they don’t get it, want to embrace it.
WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO SHARE WITH AN ARTIST WHO HAS AN ART PRACTICE THAT THEY WOULD LIKE TO START INTERNATIONALISING?
Know why you want to do it, both personally, and professionally. It’s good to think now about where in the world you would like to start developing your work and touring your work. Things take time. I’m currently in my 10th year of making performance work now. So be patient. Network as much as possible.
+ Based in Leeds
+ Residency in Brazil
Natalie Reckert + Mark Morreau
WHAT IS INTERNATIONALISING YOUR PRACTICE?
Mark: As a UK based company, it’s an opportunity for us to get our work out there, for it to be seen by people outside of the UK. So to get into the international market. It’s also an opportunity to create partnerships with the kinds of people who we are interested in working with, maybe they are technologists or physiologists or medical people or data sculptors. So bringing us into contact with them, but primarily, I would say it’s about finding a bigger market for our work. Do you agree?
Natalie: I agree. To tour outside of the UK. Mainly.
Mark: I think that the touring market in the UK is broken. I know from talking to producers, that it’s very, very, very, very, very hard to make a tour, where you have dates that are anywhere close to each other. I see that the way it works in France, for example, where the different regions, the different areas, the different villages, all group together to create or to buy a show that they tour amongst all those places, I would love to get into that kind of market in France, for example.
Natalie: And for us, it’s just not so easy in the UK, to fit into a category that’s bookable. And we are, probably by most theatres, considered a performance that they take a risk with. So there’s less and less readiness to take such risks and programme work that might not have a clear cut audience.
to applying for residencies or other opportunities, but to not wait to be invited, but to go to the places and find enjoyable ways for yourself to talk to the people who are there who can tell you more about how things work. So that relationships can develop organically. It will give you a much better idea of the landscape than just browsing the internet.
What have you been thinking about here that you hadn’t already been thinking about before? What questions has this experience prompted for you?
WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO SHARE WITH AN ARTIST WHO HAS AN ART PRACTICE THAT THEY WOULD LIKE TO START INTERNATIONALISING?
Natalie: Travelling to places that you find interesting and do activities there starting from workshops, to talks,
Mark: It’s increased my level of frustration in the gap between where we are and where we want to be. Another Route has shown us how big that gap is and hasn’t done very much to diminish that gap. We haven’t met the producers or the venues that we need to for us to move on.
Natalie: Yeah, I agree. I think it’s made me very aware of the industry that we sit in and that somehow I find often in performance, that in order to really progress, you need to develop meaningful personal relationships with people. So it has kind of made me more aware that we have this industry of impersonal contacts around us which has made it seem somehow less achievable to build that network.
Mark: And also frustration of the huge gap in thinking between Europe and the United Kingdom in terms of just philosophy. And the time you have as an artist: the time you have to reflect, to communicate, to engage, to research, to develop.
Natalie: I am increasingly wondering how the work that I or that we want to make is going to be funded at all in the UK.
Mark: You know, with a workflow which, by virtue of what we do, is technically complex... and that technical complexity necessitates an extra expense in terms of how long it takes to get in, how long it takes to get out. And how hard that is to get support for...
Natalie: Yeah. But most of all, also, I find it is, it’s a huge barrier to getting the communities involved, which is one of the prime factors of fund-ibility in the UK, so it’s heightened, it’s highlighted the gap between how here [Brussels] there is a room for art being art, and there’s less and less...
Yesterday, we were just listening to Nicolas Galeazzi talk about The Fair Kin Arts Almanac and the things that they create at State of the arts.
I haven’t seen anything like that develop in the UK for decades! And we are hearing from people who get grant funding for a five year period. Five years!! Think what you could create with the security of five years’ guaranteed funding. I don’t think such a thing exists in the UK.
Mark: Yes, in the UK it feels like the art is about engagement. That is the principal thing, it’s not about the art it’s about the engagement - the boxes that you tick, the diversity of your team.
Natalie: But then and also I guess, so for me during this whole trip, it’s prompted the question of home. Is home where you feel your home is or is home where you can make the work you want to make? Because I want home to be where I feel at home, but that’s not where I can make the work. Because during this entire trip I’ve been asking myself whether I should move here [Brussels]. The most sensible decision probably for my career would be to move here but I’m not sure whether I could build a home here the way I’ve built a home in London. Yeah, I think probably that’s the most important question for me that has arisen during this trip.
Mark: It has again raised the difficulties of Brexit. The fact that Natalie can work in Europe but I can’t and how that might affect what work we can do in Europe.
+ Based in London + Residency in Canada & The Netherlands
Rhiannon Armstrong
WHAT DOES INTERNATIONALISING YOUR PRACTICE MEAN TO YOU?
When I decided to apply to this programme I was aware that I work 100% in the UK at the moment, and that the UK is a place that’s increasingly closed to influences outside of its own idea of itself. I’ve felt that as an artist making work in the UK, with and for UK audiences, I need to be aware of that and resist closing down to ideas outside of my own idea of myself, or the island I’m on or my own idea of this island. Exceptionalism and isolationism are a national disease that I am not immune to. I suppose I saw this programme as an opportunity to intervene in that.
There’s also a business thing about internationalising your practice, there’s a business meaning to that. A fellow member of the Another Route cohort, when I told them I had a Canadian passport said, “that’s a whole other market!” I was like, “What the fuck? I never think about markets.” There’s that! I think it does also mean that somewhere for me... diversifying income streams. Eww, I hate that this is true. But that’s the reality given how hard it is to earn a living where I am.
how when we were on the train, and we came up out of the tunnel going through France, I just had this real feeling in my body that I was getting away from this place where there’s this grasping and holding against things coming in; people coming in, influences coming in, ideas of who we are that are going to challenge our sense of ourselves coming in. The way that xenophobia and racism show up in migration and economic policy, I just had this real sense of like, relief, leaving that island. But then that’s also happening in the places where we are in different ways, I guess. Yes. I mean, in Europe, it’s happening all over the place. The same grasping. Don’t let anybody in.
“Here’s something I wrote to myself recently, I wrote down: “I am a vector through which power will reassert itself.” I mean, all the time. Am I comfortable with that? Of course not.
So, how am I going to try and fight or resist that?”
So leaving the island, the grasping isolationism. Not just to bring my work somewhere but as part of a reflective process. The work I do is really context specific, as in all the ideas come out of really specific responses to really specific social contexts, and seek to intervene there. I can go somewhere different and absorb all the different, really specific social contexts, but I have to know that I can’t know it. There are things I can absorb, but I really cannot understand it the way I understand where I live and have lived for decades.
Opportunity for collaboration. That’s something that I think about. Looking to collaborate with people who live in a context that I don’t, what that might be like and how we might all be changed by that process.
IT SOUNDS LIKE IT’S IN FLUX AND LIKE IT BEGINS WITH A LOT OF ENERGY AROUND LEAVING THE ISLAND MENTALITY, FROM THE PRESPECTIVE OF AN ARTIST MAKING. AND THE ISLAND MENTALITY SOUNDS LIKE AN ECHO CHAMBER.
It’s not any island, it’s the UK. And it’s England in particular. I described the other day to someone about
HOW DO YOU THINK THAT PROCESS OF GOING OUT AND EXPERIENCING OTHER VERY SPECIFIC CONTEXTS IS GOING TO INFLUENCE YOUR METHOD?
I don’t know how my process is going to change. I think what I want to do is put myself in the position where it can change me the most with the opportunity I have.
The thing I am planning to do with my residency is to try out a remaking process for my work Public Selfcare System in collaboration with a group of artists and social justice campaigners locally. This is a public space work, disabled-led, and we will be working across language and cultural barriers, in a country I have never been to before.
I have never tried remaking or handing over a work to others in this way. I will be way outside my comfort zone. So that will fuck me right up. In a good way! I’m scared, and it’s what I’m looking forward to.
WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO SHARE WITH AN ARTIST THAT MAKES PERFORMANCE WORK, AND WHO WOULD LIKE TO START INTERNATIONALISING THEIR PRACTICE?
I’d love to have regular conversations with other artists and producers who are either already or just beginning to reach across the pond (whichever pond). Maybe it’s a conversation group, peer support for holding ourselves and each other accountable to think about these things in a rigorous way, as we’re doing them.
There isn’t a peer group yet but I share a willingness to take the time to talk about that tricky, tricky stuff.
One thing that I’ve been thinking a lot about, which hasn’t been a feature of this structure that we’re part of, is really rigorous, ethical questioning about what it is to be a British artist, or a British-based artist, or a Britishresourced artist doing anything at all, including tourism in any other place in the world.
What I want to impart is an urgency around doing that as you do your internationalising though...
DO YOU MEAN IN THE CONTEXT OF LIKE... Colonialism.
More than gesture, the mechanisms of how things work when you go somewhere. I am a disabled artist, often collaborating with other disabled artists and people at the intersections of various experiences of marginalisation, and I think a lot about power.
Here’s something I wrote to myself recently, I wrote down: “I am a vector through which power will reassert itself.” I mean, all the time. Am I comfortable with that? Of course not. So, how am I going to try and fight or resist that
AND WHEN YOU SAY POWER, YOU DON’T JUST MEAN YOUR PERSONAL INDIVIDUAL...
No, I mean white supremacy mostly, ableist white supremacist capitalist hetero patriarchy. I am abstracting it by saying power will reassert itself through me as a vector. What I mean is that I will set up structures when I bring my work somewhere, especially if I’m moving internationally. I’ll set in motion a working practice or a structure and that structure will harm people, because I am a vector through which ableist white supremacist capitalist hetero patriarchy reasserts itself.
So, knowing that this harm will happen, I need to spend preventative energy and attention on trying to preempt and mitigate it. I need to also be ready to hear if someone is telling me that this is happening right now.
One of the mitigation efforts, I think, is for peers, for British peers to be talking to one another about this reality.
So maybe the thing I would share right now is the statement:
You are a vector through which power will reassert itself.
Then a question: How are you going to mitigate that?
+ Based in London
+ Residency in Finland and Portugal
WHAT IS INTERNATIONALISING YOUR PRACTICE?
I think lots of artists dream about travelling with their work - exploring new places, meeting new audiences, finding different contexts where the work sits differently - and that once it begins, momentum will start to snowball. In my experience it’s actually very hard. I’ve been lucky enough to do some international projects, but each dialogue feels like starting from scratch.
Increasingly, I’m trying to think about international inspiration, rather than creating or touring work internationally. As part of Another Route, I went on a research trip to Harstad in arctic northern Norway to experience an amazing array of different performances at the festival: Festspillene i Nord-Norge. It was wonderful and I’m very grateful. I got to hear everything from classical chamber groups to punk bands, and was particularly excited to witness a range of different Sami musical traditions.
WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO SHARE WITH AN ARTIST WHO HAS AN ART PRACTICE THAT THEY WOULD LIKE TO START INTERNATIONALISING?
A few years ago I was invited to lead a weekend singing workshop in Prague; that’s not something I do very regularly, but it was mentioned on my website as something I offer. Even though that organisation had never previously hosted performances, they invited me to come back later that year with one of my shows and it was a wonderful process - so much so that we staged it again the following year, and we’re planning a new project together. So I guess my lesson from this is to think about all the different ways you might connect with someone, and to really foster those relationships.
WHAT DO YOU GET FROM INTERNATIONALISING YOUR PRACTICE?
I love feeling part of the wider world. I find that most international contexts have less rigid ideas around different artforms and styles, and I enjoy letting the work speak for itself. Voice is at the heart of all my work, so it’s great to spend time in places where singing is part of everyday life.
+ Based in Frome + Residency in Australia and Norway
ty Standen
Yolanda Mercy
WHAT IS INTERNATIONALISING YOUR PRACTICE?
To me internationalising my practice is creating a community from different places around the world which I have had an opportunity to do through Another Route and I’m very excited to keep doing that.
WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO SHARE WITH AN ARTIST WHO HAS AN ART PRACTICE THAT THEY WOULD LIKE TO START INTERNATIONALISING?
I would say be open, ask questions, don’t be afraid. It’s nerve-wracking because you’re like “will people like my work?” and “how will I be received?” but go for it, really go for it.
WHAT DO YOU GET FROM INTERNATIONALISING YOUR PRACTICE?
Creating! Creating! Creating! And creating a community. Making new friends. It’s so lovely to have friends all over the world who you can be like “Hey I’m inspired by this! What are you inspired by at the moment?” It’s a really lovely experience so yeah I would definitely say: internationalise if you can!
+ Based in London + Residency in Australia
Credits
Project Leads
Artsadmin: Róise Goan, Mark Godber
Total Theatre: Jo Crowley, Becki Haines
Forest Fringe: Ira Brand, Andy Field, Deborah Pearson
Consortium
- 1927
- Action Hero
- Coney
- Forced Entertainment
- Gecko
- The Javaad Alipoor Company
- NoFit State
- Quarantine
- Stan’s Café
- ZU-UK
Programme Producer: Dan Kok
Assistant Producer: Nene Camara
Mentors
- 1927
- Action Hero
- Forced Entertainment
- The Javaad Alipoor Company
- NoFit State
- Quarantine
- Roisin Caffrey
- Judith Dimant
- Nadine Patel
- Clod Ensemble
- Forest Fringe
Labs
Lab 1 - England (Hawkwood Centre for Future Thinking)
Lab 2 - Cairo, Egypt. Downtown Contemporary Arts Festival
Lab 3 - Brussels, Ghent. Belgium
First round application assessment support
- Maddy Costa: Dramaturg
- Eileen Evans: Forced Entertainment
- Richard Gregory: Quarantine
- Philippa Hambly: Theatre Maker (and 1927 collaborator)
- Nicki Hobday: Theatre Maker (and Forced Entertainment collaborator)
- Kamaal Hussain: Theatre Maker
- Reena Kalsi: Producer
- Grace Okereke: Uprise Rebel
- Gemma Paintin: Action Hero
- Tom Rack: NoFit State
- Nick Sweeting: The Javaad Alipoor Company
- Valentina Vela: Artsadmin
- Salome Wagaine: Producer
Selection panel
Malú Ansaldo (Argentina/UK)
Meredith Boggia (USA)
Francisco Frazão (Portugal)
Kee Hong Low (Hong Kong)
Molly Nicholson (UK)
Harun Morrison (UK)
Ahilan Ratnamohan (Australia/Belgium)
Photographs
Jemima Yong, Leontien Allemeersch & Another Route fellows
This publication was made by Jemima Yong and Anahí Saravia Herrera, in London, UK (2024).
Print run of 200 copies
Funders of Another Route:
