Notes from the Independent Artists' Survival Summit

An Artist Forum event was held at Bristol Old Vic for independent artists a day after the announcement of the closure of MAYK. It was hosted by Caroline Williams (Associate Artist, Bristol Old Vic) and Gemma Paintin (Co-director, Action Hero).

For full documentation of the event please go here.

Increasingly there has been a sense of unease that what had always made Bristol such an attractive prospect for contemporary performance makers was being slowly undone or had in fact disappeared. We wanted to bring people together and see if this feeling connected to the facts and, if it did, ask what we might be able to do about it? The event was well attended, showing the appetite for the discussion. The artists in the room were some of my favourite performance makers and both Gemma and I felt lucky to be able to hold this space for them and for ourselves. 

Ironically, for an event about contemporary performance, we broke our time together into three acts. 

ACT 1: ARE WE IN AN EXTINCTION EVENT?

We kicked things off with a bit of time travel. We compared the landscape for making contemporary performance in 2010 versus 2025. By 2025 we noted the disappearance of Theatre Bristol, Mayfest, Ferment, In Between Times, MAYK and the contemporary arts performance programme at Arnolfini. Then it was time for the big fact-finding sharing. We shared up to date research around the current funding landscape, including discussions around Brexit, austerity, inflation and the cost-of-living crises. We looked at the numbers in terms of the government’s funding decisions and how that affects DCMS, Arts Council and Bristol City Council. We also provided evidence and analysis around why Project Grants and DYCP are so oversubscribed. 

ACT II: IT’S NOT PERSONAL, UNTIL IT IS.

In the name of solidarity and transparency we asked some of our favourite artists and companies three questions and shared their answers: 

1.    Do you agree it’s a hard time to get experimental work made in Bristol or/and in the UK?  

2.    What survival strategies have you put in place? 

3.    What advice would you give to someone who’s struggling to get work made?

We then created our own wall filled with our own survival strategies. 

ACT III: DREAMING IN THE DARK 

It feels hard to dream or even define what you need when you’re in survival mode. We tried to hold a moment in which artists could articulate the one change they’d like to see in Bristol that would most positively affect their practice. We then asked that each person stood in front of the wall of wants and asked what social or cultural capital they had that could help some of the wants come true. 

At the end of our time together it was clear that long-lasting solutions weren’t going to be quick or necessarily easy but we’d all thoroughly inspected how leaky our shared boat was and could now, at least, make informed decisions about how best to survive. And perhaps, most meaningfully, it wasn’t necessary to do that thinking alone.