DRPRG.8 – Postcapitalism: A Guide to our Future by Paul Mason
Date: Wednesday 21 October
Time: 7.30pm
Venue: Studio 180, 180 Lambeth Road, London (if you can’t make it in person you are very welcome to join us by Skype – drop us a message here with your skype name and we’ll call you when the group starts)
Members of the East storytelling group got together for an informal gathering yesterday, to catch up on on news, share food, discuss our plans for the future and – inevitably – tell some stories. (To those members who couldn’t make it – you were missed and we look forward to seeing you next time!) We’re currently between formal projects and waiting for the results of a funding application, but thanks to BSK, our main partner for East, we could meet in a local community space to keep the momentum going. All being well we have a creative few months ahead, including making a video archive of the stories we’ve told so far. Fingers crossed for funding. More information to follow as it happens…
Oh and it’s never too late for new people to get involved! Drop us a line.
Here are some photos.
The Arches went into administration today. The press release with all the details is here.
This is terrible on a great many levels.
It means the loss of an incredible venue which kick-started a a huge amount of careers and provided a fantastic starting point for a great many companies (including us, as our first professional piece, Selfish, was an Arches commission). It’s a loss for Glasgow of course, and Scotland, and for UK arts touring. It’s also a blow to a whole model of working. The Arches was an exemplar of the idea that a venue could generate a commercial income and use that to fund brave and experimental work. But now we can see that such a fine balance is impossible without proper support and joined-up thinking from the authorities. It’s pretty shocking, really, that such a vital arts venue could be lost because of the intransigence of the Glasgow Licensing Board.
Here’s a great provocation from This Thing Called Artist Development at Ovalhouse by Alex Swift.
The full title of the talk is “Samuel Beckett’s First Play Was Shit And It Took A World War For Him To Write A Good One (and he was 40 before he did) or Artist Development Programmes are a Form of Disciplining Reified Ideology Reflecting the Underlying Structures, Practices and Brutalities of the Late-Capitalist, Neo-Liberal Economic Base, And, You Know, That Can Fuck Off.”
It’s sort of about artist development but it’s also about, well, you know, the world. And stuff.
The Arches in Glasgow was the venue that had the courage to give Daedalus its first proper, professional gig, and the result was that we made and premiered Selfish there (show here, with Onur Orkut).
The Arches has a unique model: it’s a very successful club but uses the profits to fund new and often very experimental arts projects. It’s an inspiring place to work, in spite of the slight whiff of stale beer after club nights! It’s also an essential part of our arts ecology – so many artists and companies have started there, or broken new ground while working there.
And now it’s in danger, due to a licensing dispute with Glasgow council. Here’s a link with all the details and a petition: please sign it!
Our artistic director Paul has been going through old folders as it’s the 21st anniversary of the first Brasenose Summer Arts Festival – originally set up by the same generation of students who also founded the King’s Hall Trust for the Arts and Daedalus. Of course, he also came across old flyers for productions we did when Daedalus was a still a student company. It had very different aims then, as it was about scripted drama, but many of the same underlying values. Anyway, here are a selection!
Meanwhile, the festival, now called Brasenose Arts Week, is still going strong!
Scenes from 68* Years is an amazing new script by Hannah Khalil about the lives of Palestinians in the shadow of occupation. The world premiere will be at the Arcola Theatre next year, as long as funds are raised…! If you can help, however small (or large) the amount, please do!
Here’s the link:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/scenes-from-68-years#home
Rich Mix, which made possible our East community storytelling project, is under threat of closure by London Borough of Tower Hamlets. Your help is needed to tell Tower Hamlets just how important this venue is to the local community, audiences and artists alike.
For more information and to sign the petition, click here: http://chn.ge/1F0tOQU
The Daedalus Radical Performance Reading Group is back. We’re meeting tomorrow to discuss Naomi Klein’s remarkable and timely hatchet job on the notion that capitalism can save us from climate change. (That’s a personal opinion, obviously. Cos if we all agreed, there’d be no point in having a reading group.)
If you’d like to be kept up-to-date on the group, drop us a line. We have a separate email group, rather than send info on every meeting to everyone on the mailing list.
As part of the research for the Daedalus/Black Smock Band Radical History Project (yeah, still a working title), a few of us visited the Disobedient Objects exhibition at the V&A. It was fascinating and inspiring. And a bit overwhelming – a lot of very emotive stuff in one room. Well worth seeing before it closes. Last day is 1st Feb. And it’s free.
Here’s a wonderful trade union banner from the exhibition; a nice update on tradition. Can we have one of those for our project please? (That’s not a joke. I’m actually currently trying to work out how to cost having one made for the band.)
