Theatre Writing Partnership have announced a free Open Space event addressing the question “How can we continue to nurture new work for theatre in the East Midlands?”, to be held in Derby on September 23rd. I would encourage anyone with a vested interest in theatre in the region to attend. My most recent experience of an Open Space event was in Canada: Making A Scene: Devoted and Disgruntled, organised by the Greater Vancouver Professional Theatre Alliance, and facilitated by Phelim McDermott and Matilda Leyser of Improbable Theatre. During the two day event the Vancouver theatre community came together to discuss issues facing the sector, organisations and individuals. As the agenda for an Open Space event is set by the participants, there is no danger of coming away feeling that your issue was never broached. The Vancouver event led to a number of follow up groups being established and another Open Space event planned for later this year. I recently attended the GIFT Festival in Gateshead and discovered that the arts community in the North East regularly come together for mini-Open Space Devoted and Disgruntled events, organised by The Empty Space. It’s great that this opportunity is now available for artists in the East Midlands.

For more details of the event, see below.

Calling writers, performers, companies, directors, producers, designers, technicians, marketeers, dramaturgs and managers: you are invited to join us for one day in Open Space addressing the above question and ANY related issues.

This is a great opportunity for the theatre and performing community in the East Midlands to gather and work on what could be improved, the things that we are passionate about and the things we wish were different.  The event will be facilitated by Nick Sweeting from Improbable who have a pioneered the use of  Open Space within the UK’s artistic community.

This is an event for everybody with a passion for theatre in the East Midlands – you bring the agenda and you start the discussion, we’ll provide the space and the fuel to keep the conversation flowing.

Although OPEN SPACE may be new to you, it has been used all over the world with great success. Unlike other conference formats, it is an exciting open-ended event that enables a self-organising group to use its collective imagination to set the agenda and deal with complex issues through a series of participant lead breakout sessions. This model:

·   Allows great results to be achieved in an incredibly short space of time;

·   Allows participants to be proactive in establishing and solving common issues;

·   Ensures that no-one will be bored by never ending key note speeches!

By the end of the event the following will have occurred:

·   Every issue of concern to anybody will have been raised, if they took responsibility for doing that

·   All issues will have received full discussion, to the extent desired

·   A full report of issues and discussions will be in the hands of all participants

·   And YOU will have taken part in making it happen

A strong point of Open Space is its ability to unite groups of enormous diversity, to that end we are encouraging everybody to participate. Please forward this email to any theatre practitioner who you think would be interested in having their say.

In order to feed everyone it would be useful to have a good indication of how many people intend to attend. Please therefore send an RSVP to bianca@theatrewritingpartnership.org.uk and tell us your dietary needs. There is no charge for attending this Open Space event. It’s first come, first served so book now!

See you there……