Made in Somerset Festival 2011

The Made in Somerset 2011 Festival exceeded our hopes and aspirations. Taking place in Oct 2011 it was an exciting mix of edgy debate, professional workshops and home grown live shows.

Made in Somerset 2011 was a very successful project which created a festival of opportunities for organisations, practitioners and students to engage positively in theatre and dance activity across Somerset. There were three main elements to the Festival:-

Made in Somerset React - where we co-promoted 16 performances by 11 different companies in venues across Somerset during Tuesday 4th-Tuesday 11th October 2012.  These included:-

• Maxwell Golden in CountryBoys Struggle at Wellington, Frome, Burnham-on-Sea and Langport
• Tim Hill in Worlds Unknown at the Brewhouse, Taunton
• Poetry Cafe with Fire River Poets at the Brewhouse, Taunton
• The Women of Wondermentalist at the Brewhouse, Taunton
• Probe Dance at the Brewhouse, Taunton
• Actiontrack at SPACE, Heathfield Community School Students
• Jane Flood in Inanna's Descent at The Merlin, Frome
• The Brewhouse Theatre Co with The Summer Set at Chard
• A River of Sound & Light at Langport
• Michael Loader in Catching the Gypsy's Tale at Halsway Manor
• Cartoon de Salvo in Pub Rock at Langport

Made in Somerset Respond – was held as an Open Space event on Fri 7th Oct at The Brewhouse Theatre in Taunton.   It was attended by 45 individuals who discussed the topic – How Can Live Performance Flourish? - see original invitation.   We invited four people to make provocations at the outset of the Open Space – independent artists and producers, Jac Husebo & Emma Betteridge, Andy Field from Forest Fringe and Gavin Stride from Farnham Maltings. The whole event has been recorded in the attached document ‘How Can Live Performance Flourish?’

Made in Somerset Refuel – the third element of the Festival was a day of professional development and skills sharing for dance and theatre practitioners and students.   This was held in and around venues in Langport, South Somerset on Sat 8th Oct and attended by 69 people.  The day offered a choice of 3 morning workshops;  physical theatre skills with George Mann (Theatre ad Infinitum), contemporary dance with Yolande Yorke (Yorke Dance), spoken word with Maxwell Golden and an all day workshop to make and present a new piece of work with filmmaker Richard Tomlinson and choreographer Louise Barrett.  After a communal lunch we spent the afternoon sharing presentations of work in progress, pitching ideas and hearing from peers about new projects.  The day culminated with The River of Sound & Light – a music and light show along the River Parrett – where we were joined by about 60 members of the public.

The whole festival involved approximately 130 participants, 48 artists and over 750 audience members.