Scottish Arts Council's shared resources pilot

In January 2005, the Scottish Arts Council was proud to launch a pilot initiative to help harvest the creation of new work.  The year-long project, also supported by Glasgow City Council, is now well underway and those involved are enjoying various successes.

The project

The project involved the theatre company Vanishing Point, opening its doors to four up-and-coming arts organisations: David Leddy, ek Performance, Random Accomplice and Vox Motus.  The idea behind the project grew from Vanishing Point’s own experience as a young company struggling to create new work while also having to spend valuable time and resources on the administration side of running an organisation.

Thanks to the shared resources pilot, artists and organisations can learn from and support each other.  Vanishing Point enables them to maximise the time they spend doing what they really want – making new work.

These four organisations now have dedicated office space at the CCA in Glasgow.  In addition, they benefit from the experience, creativity and knowledge of the team at Vanishing Point and of each other.  Vanishing Point helps the organisations in areas such as administration, funding and accountancy, thus freeing time for creative thinking and practice.  The end goal is the creation of high quality exciting new work.  They have undoubtedly taken to this challenge, with each of the four organisations going from strength to strength.

Participating organisations

Vanishing Point aims to imagine and realise exciting, unusual theatre with a strong international perspective.  They tell stories through a distinctive visual language, combining an often physical performance style with inventive design and animation.  To read more, see this month's focus on Vanishing Point.

David Leddy is a theatre writer, director, performer and producer.  To find out more about him, read October's profile of David Leddy.

ek was established in 2002 to make new performance work that responds to the contemporary cultural environment.  Their new performance, Plain Speaking, will be first presented as a work-in-progress in November 2005 at Tramway in Glasgow.  This is a Tramway Dark Lights Commission and supported by Scottish Arts Council Project Funding.  To read more about its founder, read a profile on Pamela Carter.

Random Accomplice is a theatre company that devises and produces new work in a variety or arts and non-arts venues.  They have recently performed Something Wicked as part of the Arches Live! season.  This was an Arches New Work Commission.

After the success of three works-in-progress, Vox Motus have just been awarded a Scottish Arts Council project grant to develop and present these as a full production.   How to Steal a Diamond weaves the stories into one piece of theatre using innovative projection and multi-media.