In September I made a big change to my life – I cast myself into the unknown, leaving my job as Executive Director at Unlimited Theatre and setting off on a creative journey. The Gods of Creativity must have approved of this move, because in Early October I had the news that I’d been awarded a grant by Arts Council England under the Developing Your Creative Practice strand, to develop my work under the title THE STORY OF WE. It’s a loose title to cover a number of approaches, some of which I’m planning, some are still to be discovered, about how we make work from a shared, collective imagination and give that voice evolving though both co-creation and individual creativity
The award was a game changer. Not just the cash but the validation of the proposed directions I want to take my practice. It means that from October 2019 until July 2020 I will be taking what I am describing as a ‘Creative Sabbatical’, working on a combination of partnership projects with groups, collaborations with artists, training, and my own writing, theatre making and thinking. Some of the things I’ll be doing I haven’t even discovered yet. It’s a voyage of exploration. If you’d like to know more, I’ve written my first blog about the project