Artists announced for BEYOND: Summer Award
On Tuesday 28 June, we held our first round of the newly relaunched BEYOND, to select a receipient for the BEYOND: Summer Award.
Beyond is a seed funding initiative, which aims to nurture, support and kick start artist led projects and practices that take dance beyond the studio to connect more people to dance, while also fostering collaboration and artistic community within TWR membership.
Piloting a first round in 2018, Beyond was relaunched in May 2022 following a period of consultation with a working group of members, to redisgn the fund and experiement with different processes of decsion making. (More about the process here)
The Beyond: Summer Award selection piloted a peer review process involving members Himadri Madan and Eoin McKenzie, who checked the EOI's against the funds eligibility criteria, shared some responses and thoughts on the proposals to support their onward journey, and to witness the random selection process to confirm its legitimacy.
We are happy to annunce that the project selected was 'In the Gardens' by Kirstin Halliday, working with Anya Sirina.
Due to the limited number of applications received, it was felt that it was not viable to hold two draws as had been our intention, and we made the decision to carry forward the focussed draw that seeks to address systemic inequalities for the next round. Those who put themselves forward for this award, and whose projects were found eligible, will be entered into both the focussed draw and open draw in the next round.
In The Gardens: a dance project for the Langside Estate, Shawlands.
Langside Estate is a housing development in Shawlands, Glasgow, that was built in the 1970s with 317 apartments. The estate was built with sociality in mind, with the blocky 70s architecture surrounded by well-tended gardens with a large rectangular communal garden in the centre. A resident since October 2019, Kirstin became fascinated with how the estate gardens became animated with social activities during the lockdowns of 2020, as many residents’ lives became lived much closer to home.
Through In the Gardens, Kirstin hopes to form a community dance project with residents of Langside estate. Connecting the 1970s architecture with the ethos of1970s postmodern dance that everyone is a dancer, Kirstin will work with a group of residents from the estate, to experiment with postmodern dance scores and the recreation of canonical dance works from the postmodern movement. Beyond will support the early stages of this research, including developing and trailing workshops for residents with member Anya Sirina, which seek to introduce the background of postmodern dance and experimentation with simple scores and movement.
We look forward to supporting Kirstin and Anya in the first stages of this project.
As always, we are grateful to everyone who took the time and creativity to share an idea in their EOI for Beyond.
Beyond is currently open for submissions of EOI's to be entered into the Autumn Awards draw and the deferred focussed draw that seeks to address systemic inequalities. Members should submit EOI's on or before Tuesday 6 September, to be considerd for these awards.
