Funding Success for Free to Stay

/ Displace Yourself Theatre
Tim Smith

Photo by Tim Smith

We are happy to announce that we have been successful with our most recent Grants for The Arts bid and the R&D of our new project Free To Stay will be supported by Arts Council England! We are over the moon and looking forward to working with all involved. Free to Stay is a project exploring statelessness and what it means to have, or not have, a nationality. We will be taking the project to communities across the UK including Barnsley, Bradford, Leeds, Teeside and Camden to name a few, asking what identity means to you. We will be working with people that have first hand experience of statelessness, facilitating workshop events, leading debates and gathering real-life accounts. We have been building relationships with organisations and groups that offer support to Asylum Seekers and Refugees and are delighted to be able to continue to offer creative learning opportunities exploring the themes of the show in the areas we visit.

The devising of Free to Stay will see us working with some familiar faces and some wonderfully new. The piece will be directed by the legend that is Iain Bloomfield of Theatre in the Mill, Bradford. Having worked closely with Iain on our previous show Eden and after being stretched and pulled in all the great ways emerging artists dream to be, we are thrilled to be embarking on a brand new process that promises to be just as intense, challenging and revealing in equal measures. We are so excited to welcome movement specialist Fabiano Culora to the process, who will oversee the physical journey of Free to Stay in terms of embodied presence, generation of movement material and compositional coherence. As a Somatic Movement Therapist Fabiano will also share invaluable skills in Somatic Movement Therapy, a vital and effective practice when working with those who have experienced trauma. We will also be working with Ben Rothera as our producer who has been an incredible support to the company since our first meeting.

We are pinching ourselves when we look at the list of partners who are supporting the project and whose expertise has already been invaluable, a massive thanks to you all: Arts Council England, ARC Stockton Arts Centre, The Civic Barnsley, Theatre in the Mill Bradford, Slung Low’s HUB and The Carriageworks Leeds.