iCCi Annual Report 2023

iCCi ANNUAL REPORT 2023

Institute of Cultural and Creative Industries 2023 in numbers...

58,684

PEOPLE ATTENDED OVER

645

EVENTS, INCLUDING

5,743

CHILDREN AND BABIES!

WE DELIVERED

WE HOSTED

449

62

2,515

41

CREATIVE SESSIONS FOR

YOUNG PEOPLE. (4,413 ATTENDANCES IN TOTAL) INCLUDING OVER 1,000 UNIVERSITY OF KENT STUDENTS. AND WE WORKED WITH

12,000 PEOPLE ENJOYED

168

ARTISTS PERFORMING AT BOING! 2023.

Cover image: GENFEST23 (@misterEB)

53

KENT AND MEDWAY SCHOOLS

EXTERNAL EVENTS WITH DIFFERENT ORGANISATIONS , SUPPORTED

43

STAFF/STUDENT EVENTS WORKING WITH OVER

30

DIFFERENT SOCIETIES, STUDENT LED GROUPS AND UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENTS.

iCCi ANNUAL REPORT

DIRECTOR’S UPDATE We compile this Annual Report to offer you a quick update on the year’s work and, if you are new to iCCi, I hope that it gives you a snapshot of who we are, our key activities and something of our strong ethos of collaboration and empowerment.

In pulling it together though, it has served as a great reminder to us of the significant progress we have made as a team in 2023.

I hope that you also enjoy our quick run through the year.

Our flagship Docking Station project took huge strides forward in 2023, with funding confirmed from the ACE/DCMS Cultural Development Fund and a second NHLF bid awaiting news early in 2024. We held a fantastic event, to officially launch the project in October, recieved planning permission in December and so remain on track for a planned opening in late 2025.

Meanwhile, Creative Estuary moved into an exciting ‘phase 2’, with a £1.15m grant from Arts Council England enabling a continued programme of work over the next three years. iCCi is delighted to be lead partner and host for this second phase of Creative Estuary, supporting Lorraine Cox and her team in their aim to transform the Thames Estuary into one of the most exciting cultural hubs in the world.

It was fantastic to see the work of our Research Fellows come to fruition, including a ground breaking ‘slow conference’ hosted at Gulbenkian Arts Centre and run by Fellow Mo Pietroni-Spenst.

This year we also took on our first iCCi PhD students and are very excited to see their projects develop.

Our teams continue to deliver outstanding creative opportunities for thousands of young people from across our University and our local community. June 2023 saw the successful second year of GENfest, our festival for 13-25 years olds curated by our ART31 Generate committee of young people and we are doing more than ever to support creative student societies, offering them opportunities to use our spaces for rehearsal and performances.

Against a depressing economic backdrop, our live artistic programme continued to deliver some really big successes that lifted spirits and connected thousands of Kent residents with our campus. The year started spectacularly with the staging of Egyptians, an ancient Greek play rescued and restaged for the first time in 5,000 years and ended with our ‘alternative panto’, Pied Piper, new work co-commissioned by us from the BAC Beatbox Academy.

In between times we delivered another hugely successful bOing!

Festival and its sister festival in Medway and we look forward to celebrating the 10th Anniversary of bOing! in 2024.

Professor Catherine Richardson Director of iCCi

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iCCi ANNUAL REPORT

© Philipp Ebeling

CULTURAL PLACEMAKING iCCi plays a leading role in cultural placemaking in our region. We are host to the second phase of the hugely successful Creative Estuary project and in 2025 we will open Docking Station – a new state of the art creative production facility in Medway.

Creative Estuary In April 2023 Creative Estuary was awarded new investment of £1.15m from Arts Council England’s Place Partnership Project Fund to deliver Phase 2 of our ambitious programme over the next 3 years. iCCi is a key partner for our programme and is the responsible authority for Arts Council investment.

We have appointed a new Advisory Board of highly skilled people who bring experience from Regeneration and Culture; and Co-Chairs, Juliet Can and Andrew Marcus. In August, Lorraine Cox was appointed our new Director to the Creative Estuary team until March 2026.

Creative Estuary works to forge a new future founded on creative energy and innovation. Our ambition is simple: to transform 60 miles of the Thames Estuary across Essex and Kent into one of the most exciting cultural hubs in the world. Phase 2 will see us consolidate capital projects around the Estuary that bring underused buildings into creative use for production. We will upskill local creatives to ensure they can take advantage of opportunities to grow their work and businesses. We will strengthen our partnerships with local authorities and expand to work more closely with developers and investors.

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Creative Estuary achievements since 2019: • We established the Creative Estuary brand and a new narrative for the region which was promoted nationally and internationally • New co-commissions for estuary-based producers, organisations and artists resulted in high-quality projects • The Estuary Producers Network connected artists and producers working across the creative industries in Essex and Kent, and included paid placements and creative commissions for new and emerging producers in theatre, live performance, film and digital media • Re:Generation 2031, empowered 101 young people aged 16 to 25 years in disadvantaged parts of north Kent and south Essex. It allowed them to access creative careers and develop skills needed to lead new commissions, produce events and explore the jobs of the future • Creative Assets Development, worked to bring under-used spaces back into creative use across the region through feasibility studies, research and brokerage • Cultural Co-location, found holistic ways to integrate cultural infrastructure into community buildings and outdoor spaces.

It provided more places for creative production and participation, with pilots in Ebbsfleet Garden City and Purfleet-on-Thames.

Lorraine Cox Director, Creative Estuary

© FCB Studios

AND REGIONAL STRATEGY Docking Station The Docking Station Project made great progress in 2023. The Design Team led by architects Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios completed RIBA Stage 3 designs and will soon complete Stage 4 detailed design work. The tender pack is being prepared and we hope to appoint a contractor to start on site this summer. We have a new Creative Technology Development Board in place, with broad representation from the immersive entertainment industry which will help provide the strategic direction for the project.

We were thrilled to receive a grant of £3.5m from Arts Council England’s Cultural Development Fund (DCMS) as well as an initial grant of £375k from the National Lottery Heritage Fund with an invitation to apply for a further £3.5m, a bid which has now been submitted. The project received a £10k donation from the 29 May 1961 Charitable Trust and has been invited by the Colyer Fergusson Charitable Trust to apply for £300k to support community outreach. This investment of public funding highlights the support and confidence in the project at a local and national level.

We have attended numerous events, including Medway Gaming Festival, Electric Medway Festival, bOing! Canterbury and Medway to showcase the project and engage with local families and young people.

The Development Phase culminated in the installation of a new motion capture studio in the Smitheries building on the Historic Dockyard Chatham, for future engagement activities and to demonstrate some of the immersive technology that Docking Station will provide. Lordswood Library and Gillingham Learning and Skills Hub have also received a package of immersive technology including VR headsets, high-spec gaming laptops and motion capture suits. These will help the project reach out to audiences all over Medway.

In December we received the welcome news that planning consent has been granted and so we remain on track for opening in late 2025.

Caroline Dennis Project Manager, Docking Station

In October, Docking Station saw its public launch in the form of a cultivation event at the Historic Dockyard Chatham. Attendees included local businesses, stakeholders, partners and potential funders. The evening was a huge success generating real excitement for the project and the opportunities it will bring to the creative industries in Medway.

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iCCi ANNUAL REPORT

ARTISTIC PROGRAMME From a whole festival dedicated to celebrating creativity across campus to continuing our major historic theatrical trilogy to a host of premieres and major new Associate Artists – including our first international companies – 2023 has been a year of making amazing things happen against the odds!

Picking out highlights is akin to being asked to name your favourite child, but just to pull out a few notable points from the year.

Associate Artists Between the two seasons, our Associate Artists List makes quite spectacular reading: Activist performance superstars Pussy Riot; live art legend Richard Layzell; digital innovators Aoi and Esteban; internationally-renowned composer John Woolrich; celebrated hip hop choreographer Julia Cheng; no less than two major, groundbreaking theatre companies: 1927 and Improbable Theatre; the extraordinary BAC Beatbox Academy; multihyphenate composer, performer and musical innovator Matthew Herbert and from Italy the incredible family of companies gathered around the world-renowned Societas (formerly Societas Raffaello Sanzio). We are deeply proud to have such an extraordinary list of artists working with us.

SHIFT Associate Artist Richard Layzell created SHIFT – a whole festival celebrating the widest manifestations of creativity on campus here in Kent. The Schools of Law, Medicine, Botany, the Library and countless others joined us on this incredible series, culminating in an on-stage “Flecture” (flexible lecture, obvs) with Sir Paul Nurse, Director of the Crick Institute. The season was groundbreaking and genuinely one of a kind…much like Richard Layzell.

From Tom Thumb to The Rite of Spring Our first international Associate Artists are based in Cesena in Southern Italy and are formed around the founders and family of Societas Raffaello Sanzio, one of the most celebrated avant garde theatre companies in the world. Their first manifestation in the season was Buchettino, the company’s legendary children’s work remounted exclusively in the UK for bOing! 2023. This was closely followed by Dewey Dell's Sacre du Printemps, a truly memorable take on Stravinsky and another exclusive UK engagement/ UK Premiere. More to follow in the coming seasons.

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A growing music programme Our music programme at the venues continues to go from strength to strength and we have seen some fantastic, memorable shows this year. We ended the 22/23 season with a remarkable collaboration between pop superstar Marc Almond, celebrated composer/ performer John Harle and the Bauhaus Band in an evening of Bertolt Brecht and the Weimar Renaissance that almost literally blew the roof off the ColyerFergusson Hall. Since then the 23/24 season has witnessed star turns from Billy Childish, Brodsky Quartet, Nine Below Zero, Dr Feelgood, Acid Brass and Henge…with much more to come in the second half of the season.

Pied Piper by BAC Beatbox Academy. Image: @MisterEB

bOing! Medway

Pied Piper Commission

At our first ever bOing! Medway on 8 July, in conjunction with Chatham Carnival reached an estimated audience of 1,000. Our programme featured five artistic companies – three outdoor shows, a silent disco, drop in storytelling/games/workshop spaces and our Digital Zone with 0AR and Motion Capture demos.

To the end the year we are proud co-commissioners of the latest creation from Associate Artists BAC Beatbox Academy.

This fantastic, festive family hip-hop musical – the Gulbenkian’s very own alternative Christmas panto – is their first creation since the multi award-winning Frankenstein (seen here in 2021) and arrived direct from a successful season in Battersea Arts Centre.

Comedy Our comedy season goes from strength to strength – now a veritable who’s who of stand-up: Bridget Christie; Al Murray, Mark Thomas, Ed Byrne, Russell Howard… and this year to the mix we added poet and comedy legend John Hegley in a glorious celebration of National Poetry Day in collaboration with Canterbury Festival.

And finally…..

Congratulations to Associate Artists PUSSY RIOT on receiving an Honorary Degree - nominated by the School of Politics.

David Sefton Artistic Director 7

iCCi ANNUAL REPORT

Egyptians workshop. Image: @MisterEB

STUDENT EXPERIENCE Each year through our programmes, over 1,000 students benefit from creative experiences provided by iCCi making us the home of creativty on campus. We do this through our artistic programme, our creative engagement work and our extra-curricular music offer.

Hundreds of students took part in our musical orchestras, choirs and groups. At the Colyer-Fergusson Cathedral Concert in March, University Chorus and Symphony Orchestra performed in the Nave, followed by two performances of a new commission written for the tenth-anniversary of the opening of Colyer-Fergusson, written by British composer Russell Hepplewhite, with words by Nancy Gaffield, Reader Emerita in Creative Writing.

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Then in June we delivered our annual Summer Music Week festival, a series of events highlighting students, staff, alumni and external community, including Music Scholars’ concerts, performances at Deal Memorial Bandstand, Cathedral Crypt, including the awarding of music prizes recognising outstanding individual contributions to music-making.

The year ended with a busy December, the Breathing Space sequence of carols/plainsong by candlelight in a fifteenthcentury church; a weekend of Musical Revelry exploring myths and legends, featuring String Sinfonia, Concert Band, Chorus and Orchestra; a linked visual art exhibition in Colyer-Fergusson Gallery by Earthbound Women art collective; the Big Band Christmas Swingalong; and the chamber choir singing in the University Carol Service at the Cathedral.

We were delighted that Kent Gospel Choir, supported by the Music department, were winners of the 11th annual University Gospel Choir of the Year – congratulations to them!

Through our theatre programme, we offered students fantastic opportunities to connect directly with industry professionals.

Student groups met with directors from the leading theatre company The Paper Birds and with performer Shon Dale-Jones; School of Arts students had a workshop with legendary Italian company Dewey Dell; the Stand Up Society met regularly with comedians pre-gig; and two MA Students performed as part of the world premiere of Egyptians – an Ancient Greek play performed for the first time in over 5,000 years.

We continue to focus on employability, hosting six student work placements in 2023 and running a Creative Careers week event, facilitating conversation between students and local creative employers. We also launched a new Creative Industries Showcase, to take place in June 2024, bringing together end of year shows of Architecture, School of Arts and Digital Arts and connecting students with employers.

The Arts Centre remains a key part of student life on campus, from our free outdoor cinema and live music for Welcome Week, to our year-round Student Membership and 2-for-Tuesdays cinema screenings. This year, we have started a new project with the ResLife team to host film and quiz nights at Gulbenkian, helping new students to socialise, make friends and feel more at home on campus.

In 2023 we hosted performances by the Chinese Society, MTS, T24, Malaysian Society, World Café, Creative Spaces, Global Hangout, Kelele, ADLN, K-Pop Dance Society, Kent Dance, POCAS and Kent Gospel Choir, in addition offering 149 hours of free rehearsal space to societies and we host end of term showcase events such as Gulbenkian Picks and Alternative Cabaret.

Daniel Harding Head of Music Performance

I entered the University when I was in Clearing, realising that the musicrelated Scholarship excited my vision to come to Kent. I’ve always been dreaming of being a lawyer, to uphold justice; I was born and raised in Hong Kong, where the social movements in 2014 and 2019 have been a major point for me to pursue a legal career.

I’ve been studying three musical instruments since I was three; being eligible for the Music Scholarship has definitely persuaded me to continue making music alongside my academic life. As I am a singing scholar, I’m involved in the choirs at Kent and a singing lesson every two weeks. My uni life has been made more fruitful as I’ve got the opportunity to meet like-minded friends. The performance at the end of last year which I performed in is one of my fondest memories so far, it was also streamed online!

People really benefit from the scholarship and I do think the scholarship improves the uni as a whole.

Rachel Fung Music Scholar 9

CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE

iCCi ANNUAL REPORT

GENFEST23 (@MisterEB)

Our Creative Engagement team offer fantastic creative experiences for under 25 year olds to ‘Get Involved’, centred around our industry leading, Arts Council Funded ART31 project. This, along with our bOing! International Family Festival and yearround family progamme, means that we connect with thousands of young people in Kent every year.

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In 2023 we delivered 449 sessions for 2515 young people, we hosted 12 work experience placements within our team and we worked with 53 schools – 23 as part of our participation programme and 30 visiting the theatre to see a show, or for a behind the scenes experience.

2023 included our biggest and most diverse ever Young Company performance, (Circle Dreams Around) The Terrible, Terrible Past, as part of the National Theatre Connections project.

In June GENFest, our annual Youth Takeover Festival for 13-25s in Kent, was produced by our ART31 Generate group and showcased work from young people and youth arts organisations from across the county with free workshops including graffiti, hip-hop dance, songwriting and recording, DJing, tie-dye, book binding, printmaking and improvisation.

I joined Gulbenkian as part of the NT Connections Young Company in Year 9, about four years ago and I never regretted it. It was so much fun. Since then I've joined the Gulbenkian Youth Theatre and ART31 Generate. I've made so many friends I’m still friends with to this day. At first it was a social outlet and a place to relax and express my creativity, but it has gone on to also help me network and meet people in the industry and help me improve. I'm now at drama school and pursuing a career in the arts.

My involvement in ART31 and my acting ability has led to opportunities like being a presenter two years in a row on the music stage at bOing! Festival hosted at the University of Kent which I found absolutely awesome. I highly recommend ART31 and Gulbenkian – the staff and the people are absolutely amazing.

Bradley Sands ART31 participant

We had some great schools projects this year, including pupils working with BAC Beatbox Academy to form the Pied Piper Community Chorus, with Zest Theatre to R&D their new show and take part in Refresh Medway and taking part in workshops with companies including NIE, James Wilton Dance, Simple Cypher and The Paper Birds.

Community outreach included bespoke projects with Tuition Extra (designing a mural for their new classroom space), Spring Lane Neighbourhood Centre (comedy workshops) and Rowantree (in a theatre project for care experienced young people).

Rebecca Lees Programme and Creative Engagement Manager

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iCCi ANNUAL REPORT

RESEARCH DEVELOPMENT

iCCi brings together colleagues from across the University to share knowledge, develop new collaborations and grow the connections between our academics and the Creative Industries.

2023 saw the formation of the iCCi Research Group, an exciting new cross-disciplinary collective that fosters collaboration between a diverse range of schools spanning multiple areas of expertise with interests in the cultural and creative industries.

In 2023 the research group welcomed speakers from the areas of Architectural Visualisation, Computational Creativity, Immersive Design, Electronic Literature and Virtual Production, encompassing a broad range of creative tech and cultural heritage-based topics.

Moving forwards the group endeavours to expand the offering to more interactive workshops, outreach events and wider student engagement activities.

Elsewhere, we continued to support our group of research Fellows, including Mo Pietroni-Spenst, a freelance Producer who delivered Elevate, an innovative ‘slow conference’ celebrating the many artists and companies working in accessible, inclusive and disabled-led arts practice across Kent and Medway.

In the past 12 months we have also taken on our first iCCi PhD students, industry professionals with expertise in theatre and immersive experience design. The work they are undertaking will focus on new ways of telling stories.

In December, we were invited to attend the 2023 International Conference on Global Cultural and Creative Industries in Shanghai. The conference was organised by iCCi in Shanghai Jiang Tong University. The two iCCis explored potential collaborations in areas such as staff and student exchange, research collaboration and industrial engagement, with proposals to form a closer partnership in the coming years.

Professor Jim Ang Deputy Director

Project: VR with Bright Shadow In 2023 we worked with Bright Shadow, a Kent based charity using creativity to enable people living with dementia to thrive.

This project and the paper coming from it aimed to foster an understanding of the profound impact of space, place and human connection in the world of individuals living with dementia.

Our work involved a five-week co-creation process, comprising twenty sessions, where forty-four participants collaborated with artists to craft four physical boxes representing ‘Meaningful Places’ – ie places with meaning to the participants.

These boxes were then transformed into immersive Virtual Reality (VR) environments, inviting participants to engage with their ‘Meaning Places’ in an entirely new way.

The art installation during the DIS 2023 Art exhibition featured the physical boxes and the VR versions, inviting viewers to step into the worlds imagined and crafted by those living with dementia and celebrate the unique perspectives and experiences of our participants.

iCCi ANNUAL REPORT

CREATIVE PRODUCTION AND PROFESSIONAL SERVICE We continue to support the University’s commitment to creativity and the civic agenda through our venues and professional services.

In 2023 we hosted 62 external events with 43 different organisations and supported 43 staff/student events working with over 30 different societies, student led groups and university departments the Kent Gospel Choir, Chinese Society, T24 Drama Society, Kent Law School, Kent Careers and KMTV. In Autumn 2023 we started a new initiative offering our student societies free rehearsal space in our venues. This has proved extremely popular, with a number of societies taking advantage of the offer including People of Colour Arts Society, MTS and Kent Dance.

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Our external offer sees us welcoming local schoools and community groups as well as local industries and commercial organisations. Particular highlights were hosting the BeMix – Be A Leader graduation – Kent and Medway’s first ever leadership course for people with learning disabilities, Bright Shadow Creative Dementia workshop, the Taste of Kent Awards, ISG National Conference, National Youth Film Academy and Worthgate School Graduation.

On behalf of me and my team I just wanted to say a massive thank you for helping us make TOKA 23 an amazing day. You guys were probably the best team we’ve worked with for a very long time at a venue. Without exception, all members of your team were responsive and had a can do/no problem attitude – a breath of fresh air and very rare these days I can assure you!

Billie Moore McCullogh Moore, Taste of Kent Awards

Musical Theatre Society perform in Colyer-Fergusson Hall.

“Sending our deepest thanks for your extremely generous support of our Be A Leader graduation event – to host the celebration at The Gulbenkian, was very special. Wow – what a brilliant team and operation you have at The Gulbenkian!

We were so impressed with how efficient, accommodating and organised you were.” Rosina Smith, BeMix We continue to offer our creative production both on and off campus, using our expertise to support creative practice, bringing the magic of bOing! to Medway Carnival and providing services to the Docking Station Cultivation event, transforming the Smitheries space on the Historic Chatham Dockyard from an industrial, museum space to a high tech, digital conference venue.

Creative Kent, the University wide project which celebrates and champions creativity in all its forms, has established core strands of work in 2023. iCCi are leading on a multi departmental End of Year show, which brings together creative students work across campus in a combined festival to be held in 2024. We continue to work to make the campus a more creative space, including our work with the Birth Rites project, displaying artwork across campus and running summer schools and workshops.

Rebecca Brown Business Development Manager

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