Northern Stage has launched a new scheme to support established artists, Northern Stage Associate Artists, a two-year programme aimed at supporting a diverse range of established North East artists and companies at different stages of their careers who are looking to make a step change in their practice, whether that’s touring on a different scale, collaborating across different art forms, or finding ways to work with new technology. It will complement existing schemes for emerging artists, such as Northern Stage’s own NORTH programme.
The first Associate Artists are balletLORENT, Curious Arts, Curious Monkey, Gateway Studio (Martin and Debbie Hylton) and Luca Rutherford who will receive a targeted, bespoke programme designed to better equip them to take on the challenges they face as the ambition and scale of their work grows.
This is not, as Executive Director Kate Denby explains, a one-way street.
“We see our Associate Artists very much as partners and our relationship as mutually beneficial,” she said. “We are able to share our skills and resources to support the development of their creative practice and professional development, and we ask them to contribute their own skills and experience to inform and invigorate our work. Through close collaboration, Northern Stage and Associate Artists can be advocates for each other and for the wider sector in our region.”
Northern Stage’s Associate Director Mark Calvert is leading the programme. He will be working with each of the five Associate Artists to develop a bespoke package of support, as well as helping to facilitate peer-to-peer learning across the group.
“I’m really excited about the potential for our Associate Artists to become part of a wider creative network—collaborating not just with Northern Stage, where they’ll be encouraged to contribute to what we do in each of their respective and diverse areas of expertise, but with each other, and the wider creative community here in the North East,” he said.
The first work to come out of the new Associate Artists programme is Northern Stage is Curious, an evening of comedy, theatre, performance and spoken word from established and emerging Queer Northern talent on Saturday 9 June. The bill includes Gladys Duffy, winner of Newcastle Drag Idol 2018 and the oldest emerging artist in Newcastle, and working class queer amputee, multi-award winning playwright, comedian and Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellow Jackie Hagan.