Here & Now

After our successful EXCHANGE at Guest Projects in 2010, in autumn 2011 Tangle was invited to Yinka Shonibare's Guest Projects at his suggestion to ‘create something and have something to show for it at the end’. Thus, Here&Now was born.

Through Here&Now we aimed to build up a critical mass of people, ideas, knowledge and thinking to strengthen Tangle's ethos of celebrating ‘the many cultures and ethnicities that blow precious wind into the sails of the united kingdom’, to increase our local and national profile and generate new interest in Tangle.

“Today was very powerful. I learnt a lot about performance and I was happy to be a part and met great people. ”

We offered a broad range of activities for theatre makers, with ‘doors open’ to anybody with an interest in multi-cultural theatre, regardless of heritage and career stage. We wanted to give the sector a chance to be inspired, to come together, work together, learn new skills and share different approaches and share these with us, in order to influence our strategic thinking. We wanted to use Here&Now as a chance to bring together emerging artists and experts – making events for young people, emerging theatre makers, established talent and leading thinkers.

The ‘palette’ included events designed to appeal to young artists, activities for leading artists to be stimulated by, and discussion events with an industry presence from the wider cultural scene. Here&Now was also designed to give Tangle a platform by which to develop our new production, Vanhu Vese, and, through a workshop programme, decide on the play or plays we would produce in 2012.The idea was that theatre makers at any career stage could sign up to take part in different activities; all those who registered were also invited to ‘stop by’ during ‘opening hours’, meet colleagues and observe the work.

We wanted to inspire every participant to be a part of the Tangle community, to have encouraged and enriched them and to have made some fantastic work.