May

Slightly stretching the definition of ‘summer’ we wanted to mention the ‘Devising on New Equipment’ masterclass which Charlotte Mooney, Co-Artistic Director of Ockham’s Razor lead at Portsmouth’s New Theatre Royal. Owing to its success with 10 participants we are planning a further masterclass in 2025.

July

We launched our Carousel pilot (see Related content below) in Vilnius, Lithuania, with our strategic partner Third Version Creative. We followed this with a research trip to SPOT festival, also in Vilnius, which included producer presentations and one-to-one support for local Lithuanian makers and producers at Arts Printing House.

Our Artistic Director, Rachel Clare attended the New Horizons Leadership Program at Riga Cirks, Latvia, which included learnings from this EU supported programme aimed at the next generation of European circus leaders.

Other international activity included heading to Salé in Morocco to attend the Karacena festival, a biennial of circus arts and travel.

Nationally we took Taroo by Moroccan group Company Zid to Bradford’s BD:Festival.

And locally we teamed up with the Hat Fair to support two early career b-boy breakdancers from the Solent area to work with professionals from Irish company Fidget Feet in a version of their show House. This was a fantastic opportunity for emerging artists to train and perform with an international company at this nationally recognised event.

July was very busy! Finally we launched our programme of Artist Inspiration Trips, this first one was to Ventnor Fringe with the next trip planned for later this year.

August

Rachel Clare caught the rehearsals of Bird$ from the fantastic Kundle Cru, led by choreographer and director Matt Szczerek. Their new show tackles the themes of injustice and oppression (inspired by the cult classic One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) and they presented a work-in-progress showing and a workshop as part of Galway Dance.

Locally we said a big ‘thank you!’ to Aleisha Mainwaring our intern from the University of Southhampton. Aleisha is a film studies student who worked with us on, amongst other things, R&D for our Playable Monument project – more on that soon.

September

To round out the summer, we partnered with Rawkus City festival, a free outdoor hip hop event held in Portsmouth’s Guildhall Square, to present Company Chameleon’s show Umbra and a professional masterclass for local artists. Also in local activity Rachel was a speaker at the Portsmouth Creates ‘We Connect’ conference, and we attended Gosport’s Slaughterhouse Heritage Open Day.

And lastly our national Circus Around & About 2 touring circus project continues, with extraordinary circus shows visiting rural and urban communities across the south-west.