It is a pleasure to launch two new partnerships this week with Projekt Europa and Omnibus Theatre in Clapham. In both case CGO is making available support for an individual producer to join the DipCP4 – diploma in creative producing cohort starting Feb 20th – and then to have a paid placement opportunity with one of the organisations.
One producer will be a first generation migrant developing their creative producing pathway somewhere in the UK, with access to London to undertake the placement. And one producer will be London based and especially interested in artist and new company development in theatre and smallscale performance. I am delighted to be working with Maria Aberg and Marie McCarthy who head up these organisations and will bring their experience and mentorship, along with their teams, to this programme.
If you want to know more then head to this page and please spread the word through your networks. DipCP4 starts on zoom on Feb 20th and will be a classroom of 5-7 producers. And I would be delighted to hear from any other organisations interested in future partnership.
This is not the first time we have partnered – we have worked with Ellie Claughton and Lung Theatre on a producer/training release, and individual producers have secured developmental support to create their own pathway through support from Arts Council England, for example.
My other work, inshallah, is with the talent development in Saudi Arabia– a Kingdom which is putting massive commitment into arts, culture, entertainment, heritage and tourism as they move through Vision 2030. Theatres and event spaces are being created across the Kingdom and they will need ‘feeding’ with shows and audience and management to make it all happen. This is one country, amongst many, who are using the arts as a driver for development and it is the perfect time for a parallel training of the creative producing and management talent which will be needed to make these aspirations a reality.
I am most grateful to The Stage for welcoming my Opinion piece on last year’s amazing experience of working with aspiring Saudi creatives. Over the winter I have been preparing plans for 2023 and building new connections with so many theatre and arts managers across the world who are engaged with other aspects of Saudi talent and infrastructure development.
I hope DipCP4, DipCP5 running November 2023 to February 2024, and beyond will offer a 16 week intensive training that global producers and managers of the future may find most helpful. And with my CGO Associates we will continue to look for partnerships that enrich this training course with placements and project management opportunities.
Alongside this we are working on a programme to bring together MENA creatives who can help us explore the challenges of creating bilingual performance material using English and the vast array of language variations which come under the single banner of Arabic. Taking an English musical theatre lyric and fashioning a version which sings in another language is hard enough, but taking that same lyric and finding a path through the tribe of Arabic languages is going to be fascinating. This Evolve programme will run alongside the DipCP and our preparations, inshallah, for training programmes in summer/autumn this year.
It is fascinating being a tiny cog in this immense enterprise, and a connector of UK talent/trainers with Saudi future performers, creators and leaders.