UK Artist Tom Bailey To Cross 600km Of Arctic Borderlands In Climate-Conscious Performance  

​Beginning on 10th March 2026, Tom Bailey will embark on an ultra-low-carbon performance journey across Arctic Norway, Finland and Sweden,  documenting his experiences along the way. 

With climate change in the Arctic accelerating faster than anywhere else on Earth, and with alarming consequences for nature and local communities, the project will explore how new possibilities of how international performance touring might happen under increasing environmental constraints in a changing world. Threshold further explores how a slow journey might function as an artwork in its own right, as Tom chronicles his experiences along the journey.

Moving gradually through regions - proposing a slow, landscape-based mode of journeying that explores first-hand a fast-changing Arctic region - where national borders, indigenous territories, animal migration routes and geological formations intersect, Bailey will meet local residents, artists and researchers. He will also conduct workshops and conversations with communities along the route. 

These encounters, alongside physical and sensory research in the landscape, will form the material for new performance work, which will be presented in 2027. As Bailey progresses across borderlands during the spring, the physical design for this performance (responding to the landscapes encountered and the journey) will be simultaneously created by company designer Natasha Soonchild, working as an artist in residence in Kirkenes, northern Norway. 

Bailey's solo journey will begin at Barents Spektakel in Northern Norway. Bailey will then travel westwards from the Russia–Finland–Norway border, moving through Northern Finland and Sweden to a second tri-border between Sweden, Norway and Finland. He will then continue west to conclude the journey at Stamsund International Theatre Festival in the Lofoten Islands in May 2026. 

Speaking about the work, Tom Bailey said, “Threshold comes from a desire to slow right down and ask what kind of performance-making is possible when time, geography and environmental responsibility are treated as creative forces rather than obstacles. This journey is about listening to landscapes, to people, and to the realities of a changing Arctic and allowing that process to shape the work.”

Threshold – A Wild New Border Journey is produced by UK theatre company MECHANIMAL with partners in Norway and Denmark, including Norwegian dramaturg Gulli Sekse and Aarhus-based ILT Festival in Denmark. The work is also supported by international climate action non-profit Julie's Bicycle, and funded by a joint venture between Arts Council England, Arts Council Norway and the Danish Arts Foundation

KEY DATES & EVENTS

19-22nd February 2026

PREPARATION: Threshold - A Wild New Border Journey launches, following a workshop at Barents Spektakel in northern Norway, with initial festival workshops and public engagement.

10th March–May 2026

TOUR BEGINS: Two-month journey through Arctic Norway, Finland and Sweden begins, moving through four distinct landscape and thematic phases, with ongoing community engagement and landscape-based research.

27th May 2026

Journey concludes at Stamsund International Theatre Festival in the Lofoten Islands, with the first public sharing of material gathered during the journey.
 

Threshold - A Wild New Border Journey represents the next stage in Bailey's ongoing artistic investigation into how performance is made, toured and shared in a climate-changed world. This includes his Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2025 show Wild Thing!, which featured material from a previous slow, low-carbon journey across Scotland, Denmark and Norway in 2024.