Two years of talking

My website has been quite neglected of late. But I have a good excuse in the form of #WakingTheFeminists.

Other than all the practical logistics of being involved in the core team that coordinated the whole campaign (that small thing), I also dove head-first into the world of public speaking – not something I took to easily, but managed to get through it thanks to a lot of peer support and endless preparation. I hadn’t spoken much in public before, at all. All I can say is that it gets easier (and even enjoyable) over time – and I’ve been lucky to have had the opportunity for a lot of practice over the past two years.

Here’s (more or less) all the things I’ve spoken at to date in relation to #WakingTheFeminists – from small groups of students in seminar rooms, to 1500+ people in the Bord Gais Energy Theatre. There are probably a few I’ve missed, but you get the idea.

And that doesn’t count radio, TV or print media interviews. But that’s a whole other story…

Photo by Kate Horgan

#WakingTheFeminists public meeting, Abbey Theatre 2015
Theatre Upstairs post show discussion 2015
Trinity Drama & Theatre studies Contemporary Irish Theatre in Context seminars 2015 & 16
NUI Galway seminars 2015 & 16
Theatre of Change Symposium presentation, Abbey Theatre 2016
UCD Arts Administration seminar 2016
Lir Academy seminar 2016
Irish Times Irish Theatre Awards acceptance speech, National Concert Hall 2016
IETM plenary meetings, Amsterdam, Valencia, Bucharest 2015-17
#WakingTheFeminists Spring Forward public event, Liberty Hall 2016
TCD Law Society panel discussion 2016
F Festival panel discussion, Back Loft 2016
Luoghi Comuni Festival panel discussion, Milan 2016
Dublin Junior Chamber International awards 2016
Offset panel discussion, Bord Gais Energy Theatre 2016
Drogheda Arts Festival ‘Dissenters’ event 2016
Gaiety School of Acting seminar 2016
Nottingham European Arts and Theatre Festival presentation 2016
All Ireland Performing Arts Conference panel discussion, Town Hall Theatre Galway 2016
Body and Soul Festival, panel discussion 2016
Visual Arts Workers Forum presentation, Gluksman Gallery, 2016
Cork Midsummer Festival presentation, Triskel 2016
Inspirefest presentation, Bord Gais Energy Theatre 2016
UC Berkeley seminar Dublin 2016
Culture Night panel discussion for RTE Arena, Dublin Castle 2016
University of Limerick seminar 2016
Creative Minds series panel discussion, US Ambassador’s residence 2016
#WakingTheFeminists One Thing More event, Abbey Theatre 2016
Sibeal Conference in conversation, NUI Galway 2016
TCD Philosophical Society presentation 2017
Creative Ireland Gender Policy workshop 2017
Women of the World festival presentation & panel discussion, Hull 2017
Rough Magic’s ‘The Train’ panel discussion, Abbey Theatre 2017
Circus & Gender conference presentation, Mercat de los Flores Barcelona 2017
Arts Council’s Future Retrospectives panel discussion, Science Gallery 2017
UCD theatre studies seminar 2017
Sandymount Study Group & Curious Dolls Study Group presentations 2017
Sugarglass Theatre post show discussion 2017
Pori Theatre Festival in conversation, Finland 2017

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Ireland mapping report for IETM

Other work

Earlier this year, I was commissioned by the secretariat of the IETM international network to write a ‘mapping’ report that outlines the current situation of the contemporary performing arts in Ireland. Incredibly difficult to distill it all down, but I had a go.

Here it is in all its sweeping, unsubtle, gap-filled glory.

(Thanks to Cian O’Brien of Project Arts Centre for being the outside eye and reassuring me that you’d never guess from reading it that I was a left-leaning liberal.)

IETM Bergamo 2015

Other work

Thanks to a Travel and Training grant from the Arts Council, I was able to get to the Spring Plenary of the IETM network in the Italian hilltop city of Bergamo earlier this year. Surprisingly beautiful, seeing as it’s the Ryanair Beauvais of Milan.

A room with a view

This was a very active meeting for me, and not just on the cheese-eating front. Firstly – the small cobbled streets of the old town were great for networking. As well as catching up with lots of old faces, I met lots of new ones too. Great cheese-based meals were had lovely new contacts including Christian Barry of 2b theatre (Nova Scotia), Ravi Jain of Why Not Theatre (Toronto), Kate Denborough of Kage (Melbourne), Riccardo Fazi of MutoImago (Rome), Linda Di Pietro of Terni Festival, and Tim Stitz of Chamber Made Opera (Melbourne) among others.

I was asked to work with Grzegorz Reske, a Polish cultural manager and curator, to facilitate a discussion he’d proposed on retiring – why, when and how to step away from a project or organisation, particularly one that you have built up around yourself. This turned out to be a much more live topic than I’d appreciated, with lots of insightful and honest contributions from Judith Knight of ArtsAdmin, Gavin Quinn of Pan Pan, Fabio Feretti of Association Etre, Chrissie Poulter of TCD and many more.

Two things that still stick in my mind from this session: Massimo Mancini of Teatro Stabile in Cagliari, Sardinia saying that his working rule is to stay 4 years for something that already exists and 7 years for something he’s created himself. And Liz Pugh of Walk The Plank in Salford talking about the need for a funeral at the end of a project – thinking about whether the body is present or not, whether the mourner have a furious wake or whether everyone slips away home after the ceremony without making eye-contact.

I was also asked to be a participant in the Mentor Room session, where you’re paired with a second mentor and talk for a couple of hours with someone who has a question about their practice. In reality it’s more along the lines of coaching than mentoring, and was an exercise in listening and asking questions, rather than giving advice or opinion. It was great to talk to a young Italian woman about her struggles in deciding how to be both an artist herself (a dancer) and a producer for other people’s. Familiar territory.

Finally, I did a 3 minute presentation as part of the Newsround session to talk about the website I’ve been working on for Irish Theatre Institute highlighting Irish designers for stage and screen. You can see details of everyone who presented at that session here. Thankfully there’s a long-standing IETM tradition of giving newsround participants a shot of the local strong alcohol (grappa in this case) after their 3 minutes are up, because I was bricking it.

My favourite non-art thing that happened was being semi-kidnapped for 20 minutes by a local Bergamasco man who I could barely understand, and being force marched with Gavin Quinn & Aoife White to walk around and photograph the town’s cathedral from every possible angle.

Not true. My favourite non-art thing was the cheese.

A nice wall. Not the cathedral.

IETM Montpellier April 2014

Other work

Thanks to the generosity of Project Arts Centre, where I worked with last year to put on IETM Dublin, I got to attend the most recent IETM networking meeting in sunny Montpellier.

En route to La Chapelle Gely, a venue in the centre of the gypsy district of Montpellier

Other than getting a hit of vitamin D, tasting one or two local wines and learning all about the inner workings of harpsichords, I got to meet some great people doing interesting things. Here are a (very) few of them in no particular order whose projects, ideas or organisations have stuck with me:

Michele Losi of Scarlattine Teatro, who are one of the partners in the (literally) epic Meeting The Odessey project. Awarded EU Culture funding, the organisers will set a theatre company afloat to travel through Europe for 3 years, making work as they go. I’m already planning to stow away.
Ingrid Vranken of Spin in ever increasingly trendy Brussels – part of what sounds like a really interesting collective/cooperative model of 3 artists (Kate McIntosh, Hans Bryssinck and Diederik Peeters) and a producer (Ingrid).
Kamma Siegumfeldt of Copenhagen’s Dansehallerne who helps coordinate the Nordic-Baltic contemporary dance network and development initiative Kedja (also awarded EU Culture funding). The Kedja wilderness retreats, in particular, make me envious.
Choreographer Samantha Chester from Sydney who was just starting out on a European research trip thanks to having been awarded a Churchill Fellowship.
Stewart Laing of Untitled Projects in Glasgow who most recently was in Ireland as one of this year’s MAKE mentors.
Harley Stumm (the best dancer in IETM) who is helping coordinate the IETM caravan meeting in Sydney, as well as planning an international producer residency between Europe & Australia. He hosted a meeting about the idea in Montpellier, so I expect some further details will be up on his website soon.
MCP Factory or Marie-Charlie Pignon, who works in Paris as a kind of artistic project advisor and counsellor.
Steve Slater (who coordinated IETM Glasgow in 2010 and was senior producer at the Tramway for ages) who is back making performance work for the first time in a long time – most recently in Glasgow’s Buzzcut. Always great to hear of people who crossover between the artistic side to the management side and back. I wonder why…
And an entertaining late night wine-fuelled reminiscence-fest between Mole Wetherell of Reckless Sleepers and Tracy Gentles of Clod Ensemble which means I know a lot more about how things have changed, if I could only remember in which city.