D&D Roadshow 2013 - BASINGSTOKE

13 September 2013

D&D Roadshow 2013 - BASINGSTOKE

Proteus Creation Space Council Road, Basingstoke Hampshire, RG21 3DH

10AM - 6PM

Invitation from Mary Swan, Artistic Director, Proteus

I am delighted, honoured and very excited to invite you to the Devoted and Disgruntled Road show at The Proteus Creation Space, Basingstoke on the 13th September 2013.

For those who have experienced D&D before, this is a chance to recharge the batteries and recapture the joy and energised feeling we all have when we leave the main D&D at the start of the year. We are easy to get to here in Basingstoke – trains are good, roads are good, there’s even some nice cycling routes to take – and there’s free parking!!

For those who have never been to D&D I urge you, nay I insist, that if you can, you come. You will not regret it. D&D is not some soulless networking event where people scan your name badge before deciding whether you’re worth talking to or not. No-one has a badge, no-one knows which organisation you’re from or what exactly it is you do until they have a conversation with you. And that’s the beauty of it; this is a place where people connect – I mean really connect, and partnerships, collaborations and grand ideas are born from a shared connection – a genuine desire to make something happen.

D&D uses Open Space technology; this involves individuals calling a session, to which anyone can choose to attend, to talk about an issue, project or idea. You can stay all the way through a session, or leave when you feel you have no more to contribute – no-one will be offended, that’s the way it works. You can be a honey bee and buzz around the sessions ‘pollinating’ conversations or be a beautiful butterfly and float around having amazing ideas in the cafe over a bacon buttie. It works, trust me, it works.

So if you love theatre and the performing arts, whether you are an artist, writer, audience member, teacher, producer, administrator or just an interested person, then come along on the 13th. If you feel jaded and need to fall back in love with the idea of making theatre, want to talk about the funding challenges or political landscape we find ourselves in, or if you just want to talk about that idea you had to build a 50ft fire breathing chicken, then come; I for one can’t wait to hear about it.

Just say yes.

Invitation from Phelim McDermott & Lee simpson

In summer 2012 as the UK was flush with the excitement and optimism of the Olympics we toured our first Devoted and Disgruntled Roadshow to 28 venues countrywide. Throughout this time we held space for hundreds of conversations to happen: conversations about what practitioners and audiences felt were important in the Arts. Some were angry, some were practical, many were inspirational. All had a sense of immediacy to them as our agenda in each place was created by the participants who were there and no one else.

These events made it clear that this was just a beginning and that we needed to continue the conversations in order to sustain the positive connections and actions that were coming out of the roadshow.

This summer the optimism doesn’t seem so easy to find. The circus has moved on and the cuts begin to bite deep, particularly outside London. So the chance to raise concerns about culture and the arts and to take positive action is more important than ever.

In September the Roadshow will return and visit 3 locations. One we visited last time around and two will be new for us. In all three we will once again open the space to support the work that you want to do on the things that you are passionate about. Some of those issues will be obvious, some not so obvious. Every issue that is important to someone will get heard. We cannot emphasise strongly enough that Devoted and Disgruntled is a space for you to work on the theatre and performance issues that are important and urgent for you, from the personal to the global and everything in between.

 

There is another element to Devoted and Disgruntled, that we think might be even more important than the ideas, actions, issues and projects that grow from it. D&D is a place where the people who make up theatre and the performing arts can come together and be a community for a while. That does not mean we all speak with the same voice, just the opposite. It is a chance for us to gather in all our combative and contradictory guises to celebrate our diversity and at the same time to connect to the something bigger that we are all a part of. We are a community, and we stand a much better chance to thrive as individuals if we get the chance to understand and feel that.

The conversation continues..