The Forum

The Forum is a network. With it, we aim to enable communication and mutual support between artists across the South West. It offers a range of benefits, from access to resources, to opportunities to develop your creative practice, to meetups and chances to meet potential collaborators.

About the Forum

  • It is free to join
  • It is for theatre-makers and artists aged 18+, based in/from the South West
  • All theatrical disciplines are welcome – actors, writers, directors, producers, stage managers, designers, stage managers and more
  • It is hybrid: activity occurs both in-person and online
  • You don't need to have previously engaged with Ferment or Bristol Old Vic and you don't need to make work 'in a theatre' to join
  • We actively encourage sign-ups from groups and individuals who are under-represented in the arts (such as working-class artists, Global Majority artists, and D/deaf, neurodivergent & disabled artists - and those who exist at the intersections)

At its heart, the Forum is what its community makes it. It is our ‘ground floor’ offer to creatives in the South West who are seeking support, provocation and solidarity. As we emerge from the first years of the pandemic, we are beginning to reinstate some of the in-person benefits of membership, whilst continuing to grow our online programme for those who are unable or prefer not to join us in the building.

Header image credit: Chelsey Cliff

What we currently offer to Forum members:

Press nights*

Forum members will be notified of upcoming Press Nights and are able to rock up to join the waiting list for spare seats. Just before the show starts, where seats are available, we’ll get as many of you in as we can! (Even if we can’t get you in, Press Nights are a great chance to meet and chat to artists and professionals from far and wide.)

Newsletter

Once a month we send out a newsletter to Forum artists with all upcoming Ferment opportunities, plus other opportunities across the South West and beyond.

Skills list

You’ll have the option to add your details to a skills list we make available to other members. It’s a freely available internal database of Forum artists where you can tell people who you are, what you do and how people can get in touch.

Online Meetings

Three times a year we will hold an online meeting between the Ferment Team, Bristol Old Vic staff and our Forum network. These will be open to all members of the Forum and will be organised around work schedules to be accessible to the greatest number of people.

Workshops

We will regularly programme free workshops, to be booked first-come-first-served. Sometimes these workshops might be practical (e.g. managing finance as an artist), sometimes they might be practice-based (e.g. a high-profile artist sharing their method).

Digital Offer

We will also hold space for frequent digital workshops or artist provocations for and from our Forum community. This will respond to the needs and interests of the Forum, curated by the Ferment team and our Associate artists.

Ticket offers

Forum artists will get access to discount ticket rates on select BOV/Ferment shows across the year.

And more!

The Forum is driven by you – the artists who are a part of it. We want you to tell us what you need from the network. Have an idea? Click the button, join and let us know.

To join

  1. Register a BOV customer profile, if you don’t already have one. We will need the email address you register with to flag you in our system as a Forum member.
  2. Complete the sign-up form to let us know a few extra details about yourself, and then that’s it, you’re in!
JOIN THE FORUM

Jargon Buster

Press Nights

A performance of a new show that is open only to the press and an invited audience. This is when reviewers come – it is the night the show officially “opens.”

Current Open Opportunities

See what we've got going on at Ferment