Fourteen Artists Selected To Take Part in LIFT'S Inaugural Concept Touring Programme

Fourteen artists from across the world have been selected to take part in Concept Touring, a new commissioning programme and online residency from LIFT, the leading London biennial festival of international theatre, which looks to develop ambitious and exciting concepts for global projects at a time when travel and touring is heavily restricted.

Conceived by LIFT in response to current global events and at a time when internationalism is vital, Concept Touring will aim to establish a new standard for touring and international collaboration, which is environmentally sustainable involving little to no international travel and helps forge new ties between global and local artists, participants and audiences.

The programme, which starts today and runs until 1 July, will bring together a broad range of global practitioners across different disciplines, to facilitate new ways of working and collaborating internationally so that ideas, processes and work can travel, at a time when artists cannot.

Out of over 290 applicants the inaugural Concept Touring artists are: Dickie Beau (London), Erin Brubacher & Peter McMaster (Toronto/Glasgow), Gemma Pantin & James Stenhouse (Bristol), Giorgia Ohanesian Nardin (Milan), Maiko Yamamoto (Vancouver), Namatshego Khutsoane & Sacha Yanow (Johannesburg & New York), Omar Elerian & Nassim Soleimanpour (London/Berlin), Persis Jadé Maravala (London/Rio de Janeiro) and Rhiannon Armstrong & Tim Spooner (London).

Over the course of the online residency each artist or artistic duo will be mentored by leading international programmers and artists to incubate, develop or adapt ideas which they will present at the end of the programme. The mentors are: Carla Nobre Sousa, Co-Director of Alkantara (Lisbon) Kee Hong Low, Director of Programmes (Theatre) at West Kowloon Cultural District (Hong Kong) Kopano Maroga, a Dramaturge at Vooruit (Ghent) and LJ Findlay-Walsh, Artistic Director of Take Me Somewhere (Glasgow).

The artists will have a week of intensive one-on-one sessions with their mentors followed by monthly meetings to aid the development of their idea. Concepts that will be explored and developed over the course of the residency include: a site-based audio performance in shopping malls, a project centred on touch and contagion, an exploration into the banal objects and characters of suburbia and a short-wave radio project designed to short-circuit a potential digital blackout.

Kris Nelson, CEO and Artistic Director of LIFT, says: "We've assembled a phenomenal group of artists and mentors from around the world to experiment on this new style of international collaboration. LIFT will support these leading artists to make covid-proof, anti-climate change performances. We're also going to be sharing these new practices and ways of doing things with peers. An age of a new style of theatre making is starting, and we're so thrilled to be exploring what it can be."

Concept Touring, will run online from 19 April - 1 July. The programme forms part of LIFT's Artist Advancement series, a group of interventions and initiatives that strengthen ties between UK and International Artists.