Meet the Artistic Directorate

30 May 2023

The Artistic Directorate annually invests commissioning funds into a programme of new outdoor shows that go on and tour across England and internationally.

Many of our partners work in areas of low arts engagement and pioneer new forms of creative engagement with and for their communities. From the East End of London, to the countryside of rural Cheshire – Without Walls’ work finds audiences far and wide. Below you can find out more about each of the organisations involved.

Meet the partners

An image of four dancers holding a makeshift wooden and net strucuture. The dancer at the front has their arms reached out.

Activate / InsideOut Dorset

An image of a female performer standing on a rug balancing an ornament on her head. She is wearing traditional Indian dress and there is a crowd behind her.

Birmingham Weekender

An image of a group of male and female performers dressed in black

Freedom Festival

An image of a life sized puppet with a traffic light behind it and a female with her back to the camera in front with her arms outstretched and back to the camera.

An Indian Summer

Artistic Directorate Partner

Dorset based, Activate, exist to promote, support, and produce performing arts projects in communities, bringing world-class events to unexpected places; and they’ve been doing it for over 30 years.

Partnership led by Kate Wood – Executive and Artistic Director

Artistic Directorate Partner

Birmingham Hippodrome is one of the UK’s busiest and most vibrant theatres welcoming over 500,000 visitors every year to see world-class musicals, ballet, opera, contemporary dance, comedy and pantomime.

Partnership led by Matt Evans – Head of Hippodrome Sites

Artistic Directorate Partner

Freedom Festival brings thousands of people together through our annual festival and year-round artistic and creative programme of performances, installations, talent development programmes and targeted participatory work to excite, inspire, challenge, empower and provoke.

Partnership led by Phil Hargreaves – Festival Director, Freedom Festival

Artistic Directorate Partner

Inspirate shapes, nurtures and platforms the evolution of contemporary South Asian arts, ensuring that South Asian artistry and talent is an integral and visible part of the arts sector, weaved into the fabric of UK culture.

Partnership led by Jiten Anand – Executive Director, Inspirate

A photographer in the left of the picture hold a camera in front of themselves pictureing an audience sat in an open-sided barn structure at night time.

101 Outdoor Arts

An image of a group of performers standing on platforms wearing black clothing and carrying green umbrellas.

Brighton Festival

An image of a woman suspended from a fixed point within a giant hoop. There is a green space underneath her with a blue sky and city scape background.

Ensemble Festival

An image of a large scale artwork in the centre of a green space with a city scape background.

Greenwich + Docklands International Festival

Artistic Directorate Partner

101 Outdoor Arts – National Centre for Arts in Public Space is a hub of creativity and the UK’s major centre for the development of outdoor work. As a physical resource for artists, the centre offers space to develop outdoor and site-specific work with specialised facilities ready to welcome and host creatives.

Based on a former missile base and supported by Greenham Trust, the 20,000 sq ft warehouse site of 101 in Newbury is rooted in local history, once being the location of a long-running women’s peace camp and international protest against nuclear weapons.

Partnership led by Simon Chatterton – Head of Outdoor Arts

Artistic Directorate Partner

Brighton Festival, now the largest arts festival in England, is one of the major milestones in the international cultural calendar. Over a three-week period, Brighton Festival explores a wide-ranging programme of music, theatre, dance, film, and literature. It has a long tradition of attracting the most exciting performers from across the globe and promoting local artists, and bringing fresh, challenging new work to Brighton.

Partnership led by Tanya Peters – Head of Artistic Planning

Artistic Directorate Partner

Certain Blacks presents performance, live art, music and theatre and the creative voice of our diverse society. Our philosophy is to provide performance opportunities for new, emerging and established artists of the highest quality. The organisation aims to challenge the norms of performance and what is seen as diverse. Certain Blacks presents art from the margins into the mainstream.

Ensemble Festival 2023 includes pop-up performances on Wednesday, 19 & Thursday 20 July as a taster for the weekend’s events: A two-day programme on Saturday, 22 and Sunday, 23 July.

Partnership led by Clive Lyttle – Artistic Director

Artistic Directorate Partner

Festival.org is one of the UK’s leading outdoor arts producing organisations. Collaborating with artists and arts organisations around the world to create extraordinary productions, they commission, re-imagine, produce and showcase a growing repertory of work that brings public spaces to life and is engaging and inspiring large, diverse audiences.

FESTIVAL.ORG’s flagship event is the Greenwich+Docklands International Festival (GDIF), London’s leading festival of free outdoor performing arts (theatre, dance, and street arts), an annual 10-day celebration of extraordinary outdoor events that transform people’s lives. The Festival commits to breaking new ground in outdoor performance and raising the ambition, quality, and diversity of outdoor work produced, focusing on the commissioning and developing outdoor work led by Deaf and disabled artists and artists from diverse backgrounds. FESTIVAL.ORG also plays a distinctive, strategic role within the wider outdoor arts sector by devising and producing large-scale work (including ceremony-scale spectacle).

Partnership led by Bradley Hemmings MBE – Artistic Director

An image of a male performer dressed in a grey suit with his hands up in the air. He has a bag on his chest and aviator glasses on his head.

Norfolk & Norwich Festival

Two people sit with their hands up in the air. One person is in a wheelchair and has a medium skin-tone, dark hair and wears a berry red outfit. The other person is sat on a regular chair, has white skin, ginger hair and is wearing a yellow outfit.

Stockton International Riverside Festival (SIRF)

Artistic Directorate Partner

Norfolk & Norwich Festival is a flagship arts organisation for the East of England with a reputation for innovative, inspirational programming and commissioning.

As well as staging one of the most significant arts festivals in the UK each May, Norfolk & Norwich Festival collaborates throughout the year with local, national and international partners to produce work for a huge and diverse range of audiences, participants and communities.

Partnership led by Mark Denbigh – Head of Production & Programme

Artistic Directorate Partner

Stockton International Riverside Festival (SIRF) is an annual free outdoor arts and street theatre festival in Stockton-on-Tees.

Taking place over in early August, it attracts international artists performing to thousands of spectators each year. It showcases outstanding international street theatre, dance, circus and music acts with a packed programme of shows for all the family.

SIRF is supported by Arts Council England and Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council.

Partnership led by Juliet Hardy – Artistic Director