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Letters to Teresa

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A podcast by Rachael Clerke and Danny Prosser
A six episode series released every Tuesday 

Episode 1 Out Now

Rot! Leaks! Administration fees! Emails! 

A podcast about private renting and housing activism featuring all of the emails exchanged between Danny, Rachael and their estate agent Teresa over the course of a farcical six month tenancy in Bristol.

Each week Danny and Rachael interview a different ‘guest Teresa’ – renters, activists and change-makers –  to explore a host of experiences from across the housing crisis. Guests include China Blue Fish; Yaz Brien; Louise Mothershole & Becca Biscuit (Sh!t Theatre); Linzy Na Nakorn; Esme Roslin & Dani Wijesinghe (ACORN).

The six episode podcast grew, originally, out of Danny and Rachael’s experience and a zine Rachael created for Subscription Business (2019). The zine ‘Letters to Teresa’ was a bleak, and sometimes darkly comedic example of the entrenched problems in the rental market – which add up to a huge component of the UK’s Housing Crisis. As COVID-19 has widened the gap between owner and tenant – with stark and unjust examples across the UK of mistreatment of tenants and evictions based on completely uncontrollable issues arising from the pandemic, this is a timely dive into the system that is complicit in this abuse of tenants.

Rachael and Danny commented: 

“In 2019, immediately after handing in our notice for an averagely bad house, we downloaded all of the emails we had exchanged with our estate agents over six months. Reading back over this 11,000 word document – we realised that we had unwittingly collaborated on a dissertation about the state of private renting in the UK. In Letters to Teresa: the podcast, we return to these emails whilst delving further into the conversation about housing, activism and precarity in 21st century Britain.

“We decided to make this podcast, not because our experience was extraordinary or exceptional, but because sadly it’s very very common, and we don’t really talk about it. We just accept it as the norm, and get on with our lives. But we want things to change, and we are starting with talking about it, on a podcast, with other people who have had more exceptional experiences. And hopefully we will radicalise some of the listeners along the way!”

Join your local community or tenants union! 

A new episode of Letters to Teresa will be released every Tuesday until July 13. 

Listen on: Acast, spotify, google podcasts, amazon podcasts, tune in, stitcher. Apple podcasts & deezer coming soon or visit https://www.rachaelclerke.com/Letters-to-Teresa-The-Podcast.

Two Fingers Up

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Summerhall
6th – 29th August
55 minutes

Two Fingers Up is a journey back through the highs and lows of coming of age and finding your own ecstasy in a less than forward thinking country. Part of the Culture Ireland programme at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2021, and winner of the 2019 Abbey Theatre and Dublin Fringe Creative Thinking Award, Two Fingers Up has been reimagined for film and will join the Summerhall digital programme for 2021. 

70% of children in Northern Ireland receive their ‘Relationships and Sexuality Education’ from Love for Life, a Christian charity selling their abstinence only beliefs, 25% are educated directly by the church and only 5% receive sex education from independent sources. Two Fingers Up creators Gina Donnelly and Séon Simpson know that without thorough, non-biased education, Northern Irish women are left at risk of non-consensual relationships, without a full understanding of safe sex, and simply not knowing how to fully enjoy their own bodies and sexuality. 

Two Fingers Up brings three women on a journey back to their teenage selves and takes them on a journey of self-discovery. It is a celebration of owning your body, enthusiastic consent and of learning to make yourself come. Like those chats over wine with your friends that are better sex education than you’ll get anywhere else, join Two Fingers Up onscreen for a frank, hilarious and celebratory performance about sex. 

Co-writers and directors Gina Donnelly and Séon Simpson, said: 

“We made this show because … “ We were angry. Two Fingers Up was born from our fury at the Ulster Rugby Rape Trial, never before have we seen with such clarity that as women we will always be on trial, always forced to prove our humanity, we are always guilty until proven innocent but boys will be boys for the rest of their lives. At an I Believe Her protest rally we learnt that 2 of the 4 men involved had received their sex education from Love For Life, the same place as both of us, the same place as the majority of Northern Irish students. We started talking about our memories of this organisation, the thinly veiled religion, the slut shaming, the £5 entry to be taught that sex is a sin-the fact that our schools and government see no issue with this. We wanted to talk about consent and sexuality, but we were sick of seeing restaging of violent rape as the go to format to spark disucssion. We wanted to make theatre for a Friday night, to start impassioned conversation without recreating trauma and so we made Two Fingers Up. For all of us who worked on the show there has been a monumental freedom in reclaiming our sexual experience and sticking our two fingers in the air to those who let us down, and we hope our audiences will continue to feel that same freedom and are delighted at this opportunity to reach a bigger audience than ever before.’

Looking to recent discourse around sex on stage and screeen, and dipections of assault and violence, Donnelly and Simpson were immediately focused on the joy on owning your autonomy and placing that story on stage. As Mihaela Coel famously said in her BAFTA acceptance speech, spaces where sex, intamacy and assault are relevant to performance – we have to ensure that space is not allowing for further ‘exploitation or abuse,’ SkelpieLimmer, in presenting work about young people and their sexual idenity and ownership of sexuality, have a keen awareness of their responsibity to further this conversation. 

Summerhall launches hybrid Fringe with live theatre and music performed in courtyard venue and online.

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Sacred Paws. Image credit: Katherine Rose.

Year-round cultural hub Summerhall today launches its 10th Summerhall Festival Programme running 6-29 August 2021. After the challenges of 2020-21, the programme spans online and in-person performances and sees Summerhall bounce back with its trademark mix of avant-garde, new and vital work. Summerhall has been awarded £166,780 from the Scottish Government and City of Edinburgh Council to help fund outdoor events and support the safe return of live events at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe. Tickets are on sale from today, and all live performances will take place in the specially built Secret Courtyard – an open air, covered, covid safe venue in Summerhall’s back courtyard, providing audiences with a safe, comfortable space in which to rediscover the power and joy of live performance. 

As ever, Summerhall’s Fringe programme connects artists and audiences internationally.  Presenting work online enables the venue to maintain its connections with international programmes such as the Taiwan Season and From Start to Finnish.  This year also sees a rich programme of live and on-demand online work from some of the UK’s most exciting performance makers including; newcomer mandla rae with as british as a watermelon, previously shown as part of Queer Contact 2021; 2019 Scotsman Fringe First Award winner Eva O’Connor presenting Fringe favourite MUSTARD and new piece Afloat; and Glasgow-based artist and director Mele Broomes with two acclaimed shows, Grin and Wrapped Up In This. 

Eclipse Award winners Initiative DKF will share two works, Dance EP and LUDALA; Abbey Theatre & Dublin Fringe Creative Thinking Award winners SkelpieLimmer Productions present Two Fingers Up; and PrimeCut return to Summerhall with the toast of 2018’s Fringe, My Left Nut and a new digital version of East Belfast Boy.  All digital works will be available via the Summerhall website throughout the three-week festival programme, with each artist running a special live event alongside their show for one night of the festival. 

Live theatre taking place in the Summerhall Secret Courtyard includes Mamoru Iriguchi’s Sex Education Xplorers (S.E.X.) – a look at sex education and its many failings, venue favourite Will Pickvance and his piano, Fringe stalwart John Hegley with Drawings of Dromedaries – a venue-appropriate set of poems about animals, Trevor Lock’s 5 star participatory comedy show Community Circle and new work We Are Each Other, the classical guitar stylings of Simon Thacker with Pashyanti On Guitar and the much-loved Swallow the Sea Caravan Theatre. 

The Secret Courtyard will also play host to Summerhall’s live music programme Nothing Ever Happens Here with twelve performances over twelve nights. Taking the positives from travel restrictions and safety concerns around the spread of Covid-19, the music programme showcases the best of homegrown Scottish music talent. The lineup includes; Glasgow based art rock, Indian classical, R&B, protest musician and visual artist Kapil Seshasayee; Scottish indie rockers Meursault; Scottish Album of the Year award winners Sacred Paws; Edinburgh’s community radio station EHFM celebrate their third birthday with a special live show from local legend Other Lands; and singer, multi-instrumentalist, composer, songwriter, library music producer Siobhan Wilson.  

Also performing are; Edinburgh-based indie rock musician Dan Willson aka Withered Hand; Bogha-Frois – Queer Voices of Folk, a community of queer folk musicians based in Scotland and beyond; James Yorkston performing songs from his critically acclaimed new album “The Wide, Wide River” alongside choices from his extensive back catalogue; Glasgow singer-songwriter and filmmaker Carla J. Easton in the first live performance of her new album Weirdo since it was released last year; Scottish hip hop pioneers Stanley Odd; Scottish composer and producer Andrew Wasylyk; and Edinburgh-based songwriter Hamish Hawk will take to the outdoor stage for some of Edinburgh’s first live music performances in over a year. 

Summerhall’s free Science Festival exhibition Syncrasy will continue throughout the Fringe and into September. Made up of three exhibitions: We Began As Part of The Body by Beverley Hood; Oscillations by Victoria Evans and E-Numbers V2.0 by Sneha Solanki, Syncrasy invites audiences to experience music made by the tide, smell the food additives that now form such a large part of our diets and get up close and personal with scaled-up models of human skin cells.

Summerhall General Manager Rowan Campbell said: “After such a long time without live theatre and music at Summerhall, we are over the moon to be hosting such a strong programme that both puts Scottish artists centre stage and maintains our connections with artists and audiences across the world.” 

“We’ll be welcoming newcomers and old favourites alike in a programme with that classic Summerhall mix of groundbreaking, quirky, crowd pleasing and radical work. We can’t wait to share this first step back into the joy of Fringe with Summerhall audiences.” 

Donald Wilson, Culture and Communities Convener at City of Edinburgh Council said: “We are proud to support Summerhall’s Fringe Programme and delighted that their 10th festival can go ahead. It’s a fantastic programme where audiences can share in live performance experiences again alongside the on-demand online offering.   

“Public safety of course remains a priority, and we continue to be impressed by the resourcefulness and resilience displayed throughout the crisis to date by the sector.  Through this funding we aim to further support the city’s Fringe 2021. The value to this city’s economy and the wellbeing of our citizens cannot be underestimated.”

The Royal Dick, the newly refurbished Gallery Bar and Courtyard Bar will remain open throughout the Fringe, serving tipples from residents Barney’s Beer and Pickering’s Gin alongside pub food and snacks. Opening hours will remain the same throughout Fringe, with all spaces open seven days a week and closing at 10.00pm. 

Tickets on sale from Thursday 1 July via summerhall.co.uk 

Culture Collective: Web Developer and Graphic Designer

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We are looking for a Web Developer and a Graphic Designer to help us create a website and visual brand for Creative Scotland’s Culture Collective programme. You’ll work closely with Storytelling PR, Kathryn Welch and the rest of the programme lead team to develop materials that allow us to better support and promote our network of organisations and communities across Scotland to create a positive difference locally and nationally in response to COVID-19. These positions could be two separate contracts, but if you have someone you work with frequently we would encourage you to apply collectively. 

About the Culture Collective 

Culture Collective will help to shape the future cultural life of Scotland’s local communities.

Focussing on community engaged creative activity, Culture Collective will support participatory approaches and projects where creative practitioners and communities work collaboratively. A key element of this will be proactively responding to the impact of COVID-19, providing employment opportunities for creative practitioners and actively engaging people in shaping the future cultural life of their community.

Details of the 26 recipients and a little more about Culture Collective here.

What we need

A website that: 

  • Acts as an open resource bank – both for those within the network and in those in the wider arts and culture community – to share and access templates, learning and information, and to act as a repository and archive for the project learning; 
  • Is a key advocacy tool that demonstrates the need for changing investment in the creative ecosystem long term (and after the projects end); 
  • Is a source of updates and news on the programme; and
  • Is easy for us to update and tweak as the project progresses. 

A visual brand that:

  • Reflects who we are: supportive, welcoming, collaborative and generous, but also fierce advocates for Scottish creative organisations and communities; and
  • Is bold, bright and accessible with a logo that gives equal prominence to both English and Gaelic. 

Our budget

Website: £4000-£7000

Branding: £2000

How to apply

Send us your CV along with a written response (max. two pages) or a short video (max. five minutes) telling us how you would approach this project and what you would be able to realistically achieve within our budget. Have a read of our full brief for more details about the project and what we need. 

We will be holding two Q&A sessions on Thursday 8 July, 3.00-4.00pm and Tuesday 13 July, 11.00am-12.00pm. These are to provide you with the space to chat to us about the project and ask us any questions you have about the roles before you submit your application. Please let us know of any access support you need to take part in the Q&As, we’ll be providing captions as standard. Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85125586136?pwd=ZEJwZkx5MHRwL3BpVnRTWHEweXJMQT09 

We particularly encourage applications from women, non-binary, and ethnically diverse designers and developers as well as those with disabilities and freelancers.

Send your applications to eleanor@storytellingpr.com by midnight, Friday 23 July. Interviews will be held on Monday 2 August. 

Positive Stories for Negative Times Season Two Announced

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With Bryony Kimmings, Douglas Maxwell, Hannah Lavery, Debris Stevenson, The PappyShow, Wonder Fools and Ellen Bannerman all featuring in the international participatory project for young people

Positive Stories for Negative Times promotional image. A swirl of cartoon mint-green animals on a light pink background with the text: "Positive Stories for Negative Times."

Positive Stories for Negative Times created by Wonder Fools in association with Traverse Theatre is back with an incredible lineup of the UK’s most exciting voices. Following the huge success of the inaugural programme, Season Two launches today, 22 June 2021 at positivestories.scot.  

The first season – launched in August 2020 as part of the digital Traverse Festival Programme – was created as a direct response to the lack of physical spaces for young people to participate in performance, and the detrimental impact this is having on their mental health and wellbeing. A staggering 2,607 young people and 282 groups spanning from the Outer Hebrides to Madrid, and York to Quebec performed first season’s plays, which end next month – making way for a new raft of artists and groups to get involved later this summer. Submissions for Season One are still available to watch on the project website. 

Season Two, aimed at engaging an even broader network of people aged between 6 and 25 has been created with a focus on coming together, embarking on new processes and changing the way we think about theatre for young people. Wonder Fools and the Traverse Theatre have again co-commissioned a new group of the UK’s most prominent artists to create new work relevant to the here and now, which will act as stimulus for creative projects for young people around the world. Sign ups are open now and the plays will be available from the beginning of September. 

Works include: 

Spyrates (Spies vs Pirates): Journey to the Forbidden Island by Robbie Gordon and Jack Nurse (6+) – From Co-Founders and Artistic Directors of Wonder Fools, comes Spyrates, a play for up to 100 6+ year olds.  Featuring spies, pirates, robots, talking animals and everything in between, this is an interactive, playful and imaginative adventure story. 

At First I Was Afraid (I Was Petrified!) by Douglas Maxwell (11+)– When things feel too tough moving up into a new school, to manage her anxiety, Cleo starts to get creative in an old Descendants’ diary – her worry book – but everything she writes starts to come true, so she tries writing down positive ideas…. A fast-paced comedy drama with loads of bright characters, big set pieces, twists and turns and a huge sing-a-long happy ending… oh, and a mad bit with a Fairy Godperson.

The Raven by Hannah Lavery (11+)- Lament to Sheku Bayoh writer and director Hannah Lavery’s The Raven is both an adventure and an exploration of what shapes and what divides us, exploring issues of blended families, bullying, overeating, depression and isolation.

Thanks for Nothing by The PappyShow (11+)- Celebrating life’s quiet moments of gratitude and joy, Thanks for Nothing will be a blueprint for a show encouraging loads of devising and playing with narrative and form from the playful, physical and visual ensemble that is The PappyShow, created in collaboration with award-winning playright Lewis Hetherington. 

Revolting by Bryony Kimmings (13+) – Multi-Award winning playwright, performer, documentary maker and screenwriter Bryony Kimmings’ Climate Crisis play Revolting asks, if we’re agents of the revolution – how do we revolt? This ‘paint-by-numbers’ play will put the control firmly in the hands of the creators – let’s imagine a new system (there may be flying cars and free money and loads of dancing and pizza parties) but also positive solutions to climate change. 

The Skirt by Ellen Bannerman (15+) – Traverse Young Writer Ellen Bannerman’s The Skirt is an absurdist parable for the next generation of feminists, based on Gogol’s short story: ‘The Nose’. Wearing a short skirt to school on the day of the Head Girl election should be an irrelevant outfit choice – but when Kay is sexually harassed on her way to school, she pulls out of the race, but her short skirt has other ideas and much like Gogol’s The Nose, enters the race for Head Girl in its own right. 

Write to Rave: Step Pon by Debris Stevenson (18+) – Grime poet, dyslexic writer and working-class academic Debris Stevenson presents Write to Rave: Step Pon – a play about the political power of rave. Who has the right to rave, to dance and move freely? What is it to feel truly free in their own skin? It tells the story a queer group of humans trying their best to rave whilst the world tries its best to stop them.

Each writer has been working with the newly established Positive Stories Youth Board to ensure that the plays are not only made for young people, but with them too, the aim to create something for everyone no matter their size, age or experience of making theatre. 

As part of the project, participating group leaders will have access to regular online workshops with the seven artists and the Wonder Fools team to build on ideas, provide some pointers on best practice and allow for sharing and discussion between groups and their projects.

On the success of the project to date and the new season announcement, Wonder Fools said, 

“We are thrilled to be launching Season 2 of Positive Stories for Negative Times with the Traverse Theatre. Being able to engage so many young people around the world through Season 1 was an utter joy and to see such creativity arise from lockdown has been a privilege. Season 2 sees us work alongside our Youth Board to commission 7 incredible artists with an exciting range of work to serve the needs of different groups across the world and tell stories that young people can connect with. 

“This season we have opened up the project to invite submissions from all kinds of groups across different art forms allowing young people to flex their creative muscles and celebrate the process of what they make. That may be performance, film, creative writing, blogs – you name it. We have also responded to the needs of youth group leaders and incorporated a programme of free professional development into the programme for them to engage with remotely throughout the project. We can’t wait to meet groups from around the world and to see what they come up with.”

The plays, written specifically for the times we are living in, will be free to participating groups from September 2021 – March 2022, with groups from anywhere in the world being encouraged to join in. No set outcome or end result has been defined. The focus is on the process – starting with a Positive Stories play as a stimulus and then creating anything you want it to be – a film, a performance, a piece of music, a letter to their local MP or any other creative outlet.

Groups can include youth theatres, schools, colleges or anyone working with young people in need of some creativity and connection. All participating groups will be sent their chosen script to perform rights free and a handbook of exercises to help their group explore the play. For those brand new to theatre and performance, the handbook provides a step-by-step guide through the process. The plays are a starting point created to inspire different kinds of work. These can live either live in the space, through blended learning or completely online.

Wonder Fools are inviting any group working with young people to get involved. They will be given a pin on a virtual map and page on the project’s bespoke website where their work will be celebrated with other participants around the UK and beyond. 

To sign up or to find out more visit positivestories.scot.

Positive Stories for Negative Times Season 2 is produced by Wonder Fools in association with the Traverse Theatre and is supported by Creative Scotland, Chance to Succeed, Foundation Scotland Response Recovery & Resilience Fund, William Syson foundation, Christina Mary Hendrie Trust, Hugh Fraser Foundation, Gordon Fraser Charitable Trust and the Inchyre Trust.