Paul Cockle feels that circus is too often treated as the poor relation in the arts.
Over recent years, an increasing number of large and well-funded foreign circus companies have come to Britain often playing in subsidised venues. Cirque Du Soleil play six weeks annually at the Albert Hall, regularly selling out; Cirque Elioze pop up at the Barbican or Sadler?s Wells; Circus Oz are currently on the South Bank; the list is endless. There is, however, circus in this country with plenty of potential. Genco is trying to reverse the British trend that the only good circus is foreign circus.
Foreign investment
These successful international companies have developed over years with a bedrock of funding that has been creatively invested in their growth. Cirque Du Soleil has now become one of the Canadian economy?s biggest earners of foreign currency, with 2,000 people employed at the headquarters in Montreal. Circus is a major export and it has the potential to be a leading creative export and flagship for the British performing arts industry. Creatively, contemporary circus offers a vehicle for many artists to express themselves in a new way. Also, many new artists can enter the mainstream through circus. The Dome injected production money into the industry through The Circus Space to train performers but this lead could never be followed in any substantial way by the funding system. Circus will continue to stagger on, existing on small grants when there is a clear case that substantial funding over three to five years would make the industry take off.
The Generating Company (Genco) has been alive and performing for nearly four years. It began in response to the training of the artists for the Millennium Dome show and it has successfully created an arts-based business for contemporary circus, delivering shows and events all over the world. Genco averages around 14% of funding as part of total turnover and all of this comes in the form of project grants or research and development. Funding bodies are shy of seeing project grants supporting core costs, yet without supporting core costs the opportunities for the artist are often wasted or not built on. To make our specialist market grow, we need to see funders grow in their understanding of the artform. The continuity of Genco is about adapting theatre production skills to fit the demands of circus ? or in the case of circus performers the other way round.
There needs to be an understanding of the platform required to stabilise the artist. In theatre you can only keep the best producing technicians and crafts people together at the major producing houses. These producing teams serve the artists, whether they be performers, designers or directors, allowing them to realise their artistic visions. To produce such centres of excellence takes huge amounts of funding out of the system and yet it is recognised as crucial to maintaining such a high standard of work. How come in project funding we suddenly don?t need these people? A circus production centre or company does not need anything like this kind of investment but could bring about a huge return ? something that the continual investment in these bigger institutions will never do.
The UK scene
However, it seems the only possible reaction from Arts Council England to a growing industry of circus is generally small pieces of funding for the artist or the idea or the show. These shows always struggle in their production delivery standards and are a world away from being properly produced in a way that would enable them to compete with established funded artforms. In turn, this leads venues to book foreign circus for their circus fix. Venues and promoters are fickle and unless you make money on the first visit (and in some cases the first show) you are dropped. Very few venues in the UK are able to offer continual support or renewable bookings to companies. Internationally, commercial circus breaks into theatres through funding support and longevity of commitment, ultimately making money for venues and promoters.
Venue programmers in the UK rarely commit to more than one night and sometimes offer no marketing budget to promote circus work. If the growth of British contemporary circus is to continue and produce acceptable product for the mainstream, then venues need to invest, promoters need to invest and funders need to fund. There are no short-term hits. We must not allow society to see its cultural development driven by a short-term view of commercialism rather than a long-term view of real net worth.
Paul Cockle is Producer of The Generating Company.
t: 020 8709 8343;
e: paul@generatingcompany.co.uk;
w: http://www.generatingcompany.co.uk.
In 2005 The Generating Company will be touring ?Lactic Acid?, ?Storm? and a new production of ?The Odyssey?.