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Sometimes partnerships involve a lot of persuasion. Liz Pugh reports on a groundbreaking partnership between outdoor theatre, carnival and a council events team.
Street arts work is varied in its form and content. Usually free, often engaging thousands of people who dont access building-based arts provision, the sector has, in the past, received little support from the Arts Council. But the tide is starting to turn& Even before the Sultans Elephant brought London to a standstill and outdoor work to the attention of millions, there have been festival directors and local authorities trying to commission and promote outdoor work, and companies and artists trying to make ambitious work, all within the constraints of limited resources.

Within such limitations, partnership is essential in order to unleash resources and stimulate the creation of high-quality work. You may recall the press furore that was whipped up around London Borough of Tower Hamlets (LBTH) decision to commission Walk the Plank and Kinetika to create a November 5 show that featured neither a bonfire nor a Guy. Instead, this firework folk story featured a mechanical Bengal Tiger, costumed carnival dancers, and plenty of pyrotechnics. But behind the tabloid headlines and fears about erosion of traditional British values lay a partnership between companies, artists, and local authority officers that expands the traditional commissioning models and one that might offer interesting lessons for anyone engaged in developing community cohesion in Britain today.

It began with Tiger Out East a LBTH participatory project designed to engage young people at risk of exclusion. Drummers drawn from the Bangladeshi community accompanied a beautiful tiger, designed and built by artists Mike Pattison and Ali Pretty (Artistic Director, Kinetika), which paced the streets of East London appearing at the Baishakhi Mela, Lovebox Music festival, the Thames Festival and the Lord Mayors Parade. An imaginative local authority looked to engage its culturally diverse population through working with two of the UKs leading companies in the field of outdoor work. LBTH stimulated a partnership, through a commission for November 5, that encouraged the artists to bring together their experience of outdoor theatre and carnival, and built the inclusion of the tiger into the brief.

Kinetikas Bloco, young musicians and dancers, came in as performers alongside students from the Laban Centre; and an existing relationship between the Events team and Central School of Speech and Drama opened up the involvement of technical theatre students. The whole teams understanding of the fundamentally collaborative nature of making theatre/carnival was essential everyone was generous with their ideas whilst accepting that they might morph into something quite different or disappear altogether. The involvement of young people added hugely to the partnership and provided an opportunity for growth for local artists and young performers to participate in a large-scale outdoor celebration. Clarity about short-term needs and longer term objectives was useful: here all partners were interested in the long game wanting to establish relationships that develop through to the Olympics and beyond, and the artists were keen to place strategic thinking alongside the demands of the show.

A desire to take risk around the aesthetics of the work playing with the boundaries of carnival and street arts was a feature. As artists, we wanted to combine carnival dance and processional images into a theatrical performance with narrative and special effects: LBTHs team were not only comfortable with this degree of risk, but actively encouraging of the genre-mixing we proposed. For work like this to be possible in the UK produced by UK artists it will require companies working across genres to work together. In this case the core partnership between Kinetika, who delivered the original Tiger Out East project, and Walk the Plank, with their wealth of experience of large-scale outdoor work and pyrotechnic spectaculars, was an ideal match, said Nick Green, LBTH Senior Arts & Events Manager.

Partnerships offer a chance for osmosis for the migration of ideas, people, and practice between partners. So leave time for listening, and space for magic. Being open to unplanned outcomes, and being swift in your response to opportunities wherever you find them, brings rewards.

Liz Pugh is Producer at Walk the Plank.
w: http://www.walktheplank.co.uk