RSC LAUNCHES INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH PROJECT TO EXPLORE THE FUTURE OF CREATIVE PRACTICE
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The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) today announce nine international Fellows who will lead a major programme exploring the future of creative and cultural practice. Supported by the UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council over a period of four years, each Fellow will focus on a research theme which responds to the biggest challenges faced by the creative industries and wider society, and the change needed for the development and survival of the sector and future economic growth. The Fellowships form part of AHRC’s PORTIA (participatory and open research through technology in action) programme which seeks to create the spaces, places and platforms that enable creativity-led R&D to thrive.
The grant is awarded to the RSC as the first and only performing arts Independent Research Organisation status (IRO) in the UK, and the Fellowships are open to artists, researchers and those working in the performing arts anywhere in the world. The programme has been developed in collaboration with seven global organisations including Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), The Music Center, Watershed, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)’s Open Documentary Lab and Co-Creation Studio, Stanford Arts, and TORCH - The Oxford Research Centre for the Humanities, Humanities Division, University of Oxford. Each will also host Fellows throughout the year to support their research and development.
RSC Co-Artistic Directors Daniel Evans and Tamara Harvey, said:
“As the only UK performing arts organisation with Independent Research Organisation status, we’re thrilled to be collaborating with these incredible organisations and their fellows during the course of the year. Our focus is artist-led research, and the positive impact it can bring about within our cultural industries and our society. The AHRC funding enables us to collaborate deeply with artists and researchers, as well as organisations from a variety of sectors, to examine the myriad ways in which we can ensure our creative industries can thrive and help grow the UK economy.”
The nine Fellows include Stephen Bailey, Jemma Desai, Janice Duncan, Tabitha Jackson, Scarlett Kim, Akhila Krishnan, Amy Rose, Amahra Spence and Nami Weatherby (see below for full biogs). Their research will explore some of the biggest questions facing the creative and cultural sector today including trust and reality in the age of AI, change-making within creative institutions, integrating traditional and innovative workflows, places where ‘liveness’ happens - from stage to site-specific to the metaverse, immersive exhibitions and best-practice for co-creation with audiences, approaches to storytelling in an immersive landscape, artmaking through a disabled-lens, and the role of the artist as an agent of social change in the archive.
Ruthie Doyle, RSC Digital Associate - Artists, Fellowships, and Research, said:
“We have assembled an incredible group of nine fellows and seven collaborators from a wide variety of backgrounds. Together they are taking steps to imagine what the cultural sector could be, and the infrastructures needed to support that. This programme marks the start of an international community of artists who are thinking deeply about what a more inclusive cultural landscape looks like: a landscape that’s less hierarchical and more interdisciplinary, and that’s built on the principles of collaboration and experimentation.”
The Fellows will have access to state-of-the-art equipment through a further AHRC grant to upgrade facilities for creative and cultural research (CResCa). The funding will support the RSC to develop its creative research capability with scope to use the new, immersive technologies to explore motion capture, photogrammetry, volumetric capture and Lidar scanning to create 3D models - harnessing interactivity and innovation for storytelling.
AHRC Executive Chair, Professor Christopher Smith, added:
“The UK’s creative and cultural industries are hugely important economically and socially, at home and globally. Yet there are challenges in building a sustainable and healthy future for the sector, which can only be addressed through research led by and for the sector. By investing in more creative, collaborative ways of working, AHRC is empowering the RSC to develop new networks for artists to take risks, and share knowledge and best practice, while attracting a diverse pool of talent to ensure we maintain and strengthen a vitally important sector for our world today and for our future growth.”
A call for a new cohort of 2025-26 Fellows will open in the Autumn of 2024. The current Fellows and collaborators will reconvene in Stratford-upon-Avon in summer 2025 for a Festival of Ideas, supported by a grant from the Rothschild Foundation. They will share their research findings and potential opportunities for the sector.
ENDS
For further information, please contact Kate Evans (Head of Media Relations) at kate.evans@rsc.org.uk
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The RSC is supported using public funding by Arts Council England
The work of the RSC is supported by the Culture Recovery Fund
The RSC is generously supported by RSC America
Funded by UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)
Interdisciplinary Fellowships are supported by the Rothschild Foundation
The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) creates exceptional theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, London and around the world, performing plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries, as well as commissioning a wide range of original work from contemporary writers. Our purpose is to ensure that Shakespeare – and theatre as a whole – is for everyone, and we do that by unlocking the power of his plays and live performance, and with our learning and education work throughout the UK and across the world.
Arts Council England is the national development body for arts and culture across England, working to enrich people’s lives. We support a range of activities across the arts, museums and libraries – from theatre to visual art, reading to dance, music to literature, and crafts to collections. Great art and culture inspires us, brings us together and teaches us about ourselves and the world around us. In short, it makes life better. Between 2018 and 2022, we will invest £1.45 billion of public money from government and an estimated £860 million from the National Lottery to help create these experiences for as many people as possible across the country. www.artscouncil.org.uk
UK Research and Innovation - Big challenges demand big thinkers - those who can unlock the answers and further our understanding of the important issues of our time.
Our work encompasses everything from the physical, biological and social sciences, to innovation, engineering, medicine, the environment and the cultural impact of the arts and humanities. In all of these areas, our role is to bring together the people who can innovate and change the world for the better.
We work with the government to invest over £8 billion a year in research and innovation by partnering with academia and industry to make the impossible, possible. Through the UK’s nine leading academic and industrial funding councils, we create knowledge with impact.
Arts and Humanities Research Council - AHRC funds research, innovation and talent across the full breadth of the arts and humanities. Their work brings creative, diverse and vital perspectives to today’s biggest challenges, to deliver research and innovation that underpins happiness, health, prosperity and wellbeing.
The Rothschild Foundation is a charity supporting arts and heritage, the environment, and social welfare by awarding grants, fostering dialogue and debate, and through our support of Waddesdon Manor. The Foundation is Chaired by Dame Hannah Rothschild DBE, and managed by a board of Trustees, including other members of the Rothschild family. The Rothschild Foundation offers grants for the benefit of Buckinghamshire delivering our commitment to address the needs of local communities. Beyond Buckinghamshire, the Foundation supports major initiatives which encourage enjoyment of the UK’s rich cultural heritage.
For more information about the Rothschild Foundation and its grants programme, visit https://rothschildfoundation.org.uk/, or follow on Facebook or LinkedIn.
BIOGS
Stephen Bailey (he/they) is an award-winning director and theatremaker and current Artistic Lead of NPO Vital Xposure, who make innovative and political disabled-led work. They won the 2022 Royal Theatrical Support Trust Sir Peter Hall Directors Award, and have previously worked with the National Theatre, Chichester Festival Theatre, Royal Opera House, Graeae, Young Vic, Royal Court and European Theatre Convention. Stephen has trained with LAMDA, the Young Vic and the Royal Shakespeare Company. Hosted by TORCH - The Oxford Research Centre for the Humanities.
Jemma Desai (she/her) is a cultural worker across film, visual arts and performance and a somatic facilitator working with individuals and groups. As an independent curator and festival producer she has collaborated with London Indian Film Festival, Birds Eye View Film Festival, London Short Film Festival, BFI Flare and Edinburgh International Film Festival. She has a Masters in Cultural Heritage Studies and has previously worked as Film Programme Manager (Shorts and Global Exhibition) for the British Film Council and at the Black Cultural Archives, as a freelancer working in film development, production and exhibition for organisations including Revolution Films and the BFI. Jemma is currently an Artist in Residence at Somerset House, London. Hosted by BAM.
Janice Duncan (she/they) is an Academy Award-nominated creative producer, filmmaker, and interdisciplinary artist from Detroit. Janice was a 2018 Sundance New Frontier Programs fellow, a 2019 MacDowell interdisciplinary fellow, and a 2019 UC Davis Feminist Research Institute Visiting Scholar Program fellow. As the producer of the experimental documentary short A Love Song For Latasha, she received a 2021 Academy Award nomination. As a Black queer woman, Duncan’s creative practice centres Black women’s interiority and their bodies as vessels of sacred creative vitality. Hosted by The Music Center.
Tabitha Jackson (she/her) is a freelance Film Executive, Emmy Award-winning maker, commissioning executive and funder with almost 30 years’ experience in the field. Her previous posts include Director of the Documentary Film Program at Sundance Institute, Head of Arts and Performance at Channel 4 Television in London, and executive producer on theatrical nonfiction projects at Film4, Film4 including 20,000 Days on Earth and The Arbor. Tabitha was appointed Director of the Sundance Film Festival in February 2020. Tabitha is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and a 2024 Shorenstein Film Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. Hosted by MIT’s OpenDoc Lab and Co-Creation Studio.
Scarlett Kim (she/her) is an artist and creative producer making unclassifiable experiences at the intersection of live performance and immersive technology. Scarlett is the co-founder and Executive Creative Producer of Center for Unclassifiable Technologies & Experiences (C.U.T.E) and recently joined Culture House Immersive as Head of Innovation, having previously served as Director of Innovation & Strategy of Oregon Shakespeare Festival. A diasporic Korean artist, Scarlett is passionate about co-authoring with intersectional communities and imagining new paradigms for agency through play. Scarlett’s research interests include hybridizing ancestral and emerging technologies; building open worlds for intimate exchange between human, robotic, natural and supernatural entities; and real-time interaction between live performers and XR environments that expand the notion of liveness. Hosted by Stanford Arts.
Akhila Krishnan (she/her) is a creative director and designer with over 15 years of experience working internationally in live performance and events, theatre, opera, projection mapping, installation, exhibition, virtual reality, augmented reality, television, live broadcast, short film, illustration, and graphic narrative. Akhila is interested in the possibilities that technology offers to take narrative and storytelling beyond the screen; bringing it into lived spaces via shared experiences. Her practice moves between the material and immaterial, between the digital and tactile, seeking new connections and resonances between them. Hosted by the RSC.
Amy Rose (she/her) is a highly acclaimed director and maker, known for creating sensory stories that experiment with new technologies. In all her work, she seeks innovative methods for creating connection with audiences - playing with the body as much as speaking to the mind. Co-founder of the celebrated immersive studio Anagram, she is now Lead Curator of Undershed, a new immersive gallery at Watershed in Bristol. Originally a documentary filmmaker with an MFA in directing from Edinburgh College of Art, she also runs wild camps for children and is on the core team of an annual music festival in Wales, running since 2010. Hosted by Watershed.
Amhara Spence (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist and spatial practitioner whose practice explores co-creating worlds and architectures that safeguard the resistance, joy and collective imagination of oppressed peoples globally. As Founding Director of MAIA (2013) and Organiser of The Black Land & Spatial Justice Project (2020), she leads teams engaging culture, land and the politics of space to build real-time strategies for Black liberation. This includes Land Black, a research and design studio prototyping anti-carceral architectural and land-based strategies. Amahra also pioneered YARD (2020), turning a residential townhouse into a neighbourhood site of imagination, artist residency space and community hub. Hosted by TORCH - The Oxford Research Centre for the Humanities.
Nami Weatherby is a multimedia artist and researcher. Her multimedia sound installation they never told us these things has been exhibited in New York, Seoul, and Kyoto and illuminates the under-considered intimacies between peoples touched by a global network of nuclear violence. As a creative researcher and producing fellow in Digital Innovation at The Music Center, Nami collaborated with Kamal Sinclair to develop the Black Bar Social, a monthly immersive experience and speakeasy-style social gathering designed to spark public imagination and catalyse conversations about the future of culture in LA. Hosted by The Music Center.
