It’s nine o’clock in the morning, and artists Neil Thomas and Katy Bowman are enthusiastically preparing to embark on their second day of workshops and excursions with schoolchildren from London’s Holland Park School. Today, the pair – who together form the Australian company the Museum of Modern Oddities (MOMO) – are taking the 12 to 14-year-old students to the Tring Museum to view the vast collection of stuffed and preserved animals. It’s all part of a process to assist the children to devise and perform a theatrical event at the Natural History Museum in three weeks time.
The first day with the students, Thomas recalls, was “wonderful”. ‘The children are unbelievable,’ he says, describing how the workshops began with students creating stories inspired by images of animals. ‘They really went for it,’ he adds, sounding completely in awe. ‘Once they got going, it was unbelievable. It’s extraordinary, the stories they create…you just feel really privileged to be able to work with them.’
Thomas and Bowman have travelled to arts events worldwide, re-creating their site-specific installation – or Museum of Modern Oddities – from objects and mementos donated from the pockets of local participants. But this is the first time the pair have adapted the concept to inspire a performance – and with children, at that.
‘We want to have as much fun as we possibly can,’ Thomas enthuses, ‘and for me personally, what I would like is that we would create an event that is very moving.’ The central idea of the performance, and indeed the whole process involved, is about children and their relationship with animals – but also, giving young people a voice. ‘It’s to do with the way the children see animals and see themselves in the world. We give the children the opportunity to speak.’
The notion of giving young people a voice in this project is in fact the pivotal theme underpinning the festival it is part of. The London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT) launches their latest season of work, May Day to Midsummer: a Family Friendly Season, on May 1. The programme revolves around theatre for and by young people, bringing a host of British and international performance groups from as far afield as Palestine, Sierra Leone, Brazil and Iran, to work together and take part in conferences and debates.
This year’s LIFT event is another step marking the organisation’s departure from the biennial three-week festival it has held for the past 20 years, and the move into a year-round programming cycle. The festival framework has changed, says LIFT co-director Rose Fenton, to embrace a five-year enquiry model investigating what is theatre, where can it happen, and who can take part. The upcoming season is the second in a series exploring childhood, says Fenton, and is part of LIFT’s rolling programme exploring the possibilities of what theatre can be.
‘The whole programme is very much about the rights, roles and responsibilities of young people as artists and as creative forces,’ she explains. ‘It’s looking at where art can open up a space for a kind of imagining a new future, for hope.’ Last autumn, LIFT presented an event called The Landscape of Childhood, which explored childhood as reflected upon by the adult. This season is a continuation in a way, says Fenton, but instead focuses on the child’s voice and view of the world.
Fenton points to INAD, the only professional theatre company operating in the southern West Bank, as a highlight of the festival programme. ‘They are a company who tour to remote villages and perform on the back of a truck for children who can’t get to the theatre normally,’ she explains. As part of the LIFT season of work, INAD are taking their performances into primary schools in the London borough of Southwark.
In keeping with LIFT’s five-year enquiry, a number of festival events are taking place in unusual locations: MOMO’s performance with Holland Park students takes place in the Natural History Museum; Theatre-rites will base themselves in a disused corner shop in Tooting for their performance, Shopworks; and the festival’s grand finale on the eve of Midsummer is an all-night celebration in Battersea Park featuring Cambodian shadow puppetry and tunes from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama’s Connecting Voices.
Fenton says LIFT’s switch to an ongoing programme of events has opened up a whole new range of possibilities to explore, including the contribution children have to make to the arts, and vice-versa – but adds it was a natural progression after 20 years. (LIFT is currently in its 22nd year) ‘In a way we found that the festival model was really untenable for us at this point – putting on 23 shows in three weeks in London,’ she reflects. ‘The way we wanted to work was much more about investing in the process, taking more risks, creating new commissions, and the kind of explorations around the work we were doing and creating certainly didn’t lend itself to a three week intensive period of a festival,’ Fenton notes. However, running parallel to the transition have been some unwelcome complications. The company recently learned the Association of London Government (ALG) plans to cut LIFT’s grant, in a debacle which is still ongoing and affects arts organisations across the capital.
‘It’s actually £70,000 a year we risk losing,’ says Fenton, adding that LIFT is currently presenting their case in the ongoing battle. The ALG is due to deliver further decisions on which organisation’s it will fund at the end of this month.
But it certainly isn’t killing any enthusiasm Fenton has for the upcoming season, which she feels is encapsulated by a quote from a production by Scotland’s TAG theatre company, King Matt: “Running the country is too important to be left to the grown-ups!”
May Day to Midsummer: a Family Friendly Season is at various venues around London from May 1-June 21. For more info visit www.liftfest.org.uk . LIFT Box Office number: 020 8763 8012
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