Celebrating 5 years of archipelago arts collective!
We’re so excited to mark 5 years of archipelago arts collective by launching our new website and celebrating all we, with our amazing teams of artists, participants and audiences have achieved over the last 5 years.
Mother of the Revolution (2024) photo by Emily Goldie
An Act of Hope (how we began)
archipelago arts collective debuted its first show An Act of Care (in response to some extreme bullshit) at HOME Manchester in January 2020, our rallying cry to save the NHS and setting our stall as makers, a collaborative gig-theatre production that combined original script (by Rosie MacPherson) and songs (by Laurence Young and Seán Ryan) with the real experience of weeks of conversations with NHS service users and staff delivered by the most incredibly talented team of actor-maker-musicians.
Navigating starting a company on the precipice of and through global pandemics, insecurities and dwindling public funding for the arts has been a challenge to say the least. And again, as the influence of our name owns, as archipelago we aren’t alone at all in this experience. The artists, companies, partners, supporters and funders that make up our arts ecology have shared these experiences, shoulder to shoulder to us. But as the incredible writer Rebecca Solnit puts in her book Hope in the Darkness (better than we could ever put ourselves) -
“Inside the word "emergency" is "emerge"; from an emergency new things come forth. The old certainties are crumbling fast, but danger and possibility are sisters.”
The Collaboration at the Heart of the Collective
The hope and possibility central to all of our work across this time has been the generosity in which we’ve seen participants and artists share their talents, kindnesses, experiences and their own particular hopes and allowing us to hold those through our processes and into our work. The cornerstone of archipelago’s approach is and always will be collaboration. Over the last five years, we’ve consistently sought to push the boundaries of what art can achieve when artists, participants and audiences are held in equality across our processes.
Following An Act of Care and its digital sister piece addressing the immediate impact of the pandemic (in response to right now), came A Call to Care which profoundly impacted what collaboration and co-creation means to our work. Across 6 weeks directors Beth Knight, Laurence Young and writer Zia Ahmed bore witness to the gloriously honest, heartbreaking and funny stories of nurses from across the UK through an incredible partnership with the Royal College of Nursing. The result was a dance film - one of the nurses said in an early session that nursing was like a dance, and the form created itself - with accompanying poetry in which Zia wove together the heart of all of these experiences. 2022-23 saw us produce Santa Must Die!, written by Rosie MacPherson, touring this to traditional theatre spaces and into community venues, further building our practice for presenting work in hybrid ways. We also continued to develop our digital engagement through The Limited (In)Vulnerability Project, working with young people in Manchester to develop games.
And most recently in Mother of the Revolution, we spent 3 years hearing local testimony about the impact of deindustrialisation and shared widely the story of unsung legend Betty Beecroft. The culminating production itself brought together actors, young performers from Interplay Theatre, and a local community choir, each contributing their talents to tell a story that spans 275 years of industrial history and shares their stories in the footsteps of communities as honest, upright and industrious as them. Our biggest testament yet to the power of community and collaboration.
Looking Ahead and a Heartfelt Thank You to Our Community
We are committed to keep developing work in our ethos of new, bold and generous art that brings people together. We are in the process of developing collaborations, partnerships and projects and are excited by the opportunities to welcome collaborators new and established to help us shape the work. As always, those who we share this work with give us the hope and possibility for making meaningful work for the future.
To the artists who have shared their talents, to the community members who have lent their voices, and to our supporters who have had radical belief in our work, we cannot thank or celebrate you enough.
Cheers to five years of shared creativity, and to the many more to come.