DaedalusAdmin

East Stories…

By DaedalusAdmin on Wednesday, March 16, 2016

On April 2nd we’re doing a couple of storytelling workshops for kids and we’ve been preparing them alongside our work on the East Archive. Big, big thanks to Rich Mix for giving us the space to work as part of their ongoing generous support for East. (As you probably know, East is our community storytelling project and it’s a partnership with Bishwo Shaitto Kendro, or BSK.)

As you’ll see, rehearsals have been very boring, sedate and serious affairs and we’ve not been having any fun at all!

We’re just putting the finishing touches to the publicity material (mainly checking we have the right logos), though if you’re feeling impatient the key info is that they take place at The Brady Centre, Whitechapel on 2nd April (chose between morning and afternoon), they’re aimed at 6-9 year-olds and they’re free. And fun! You can book here.

Oh and we filmed a load more stuff for the archive. The whole thing will go public later next month…

Major Projects Participation Partners and Collaborators

East Archive: progress report

By DaedalusAdmin on Wednesday, February 24, 2016

We’re now well into the process of recording our stories and songs from the East project for our online video archive. Today we had a look at all the videos we have so far. Bangla, Jewish and Somali songs, folk tales from Bangladesh and Korea, personal stories from the UK, Bangladesh and Sweden…With plenty more still to come. It’s extremely rewarding to see our work being documented and we’re looking forward to sharing it with the world.

One of the highlights of this process was a get-together a couple of weeks ago, where we shared food, stories and songs. Several pieces from that session will be in the archive. Here are some photos from the event taken by members of the group.

Some of the East Storytelling community

The East storytelling project is a co-production between Bishwo Shahitto Kendro (BSK) and Daedalus Theatre Company. It’s managed by Daedalus and funded by Arts Council England and crowdfunding, with in kind support from Rich Mix and Tower Hamlets Arts & Events.

Events Partners and Collaborators

Titanic Express vigil, 3pm on Monday

By DaedalusAdmin on Saturday, December 26, 2015

The Titanic Express massacre 15 years ago was one of many atrocities against civilians in Burundi that have taken place over the last few decades. Overshadowed from an international viewpoint by the Rwandan genocide, the ongoing conflict in Burundi has taken many lives and is still very much unresolved. Recent flare-ups, not least the violent repression of anti-government protests, are a chilling sign that the situation is again deteriorating.

Our production of A Place at the Table was initially a response to The Titanic Express massacre, although it developed into a broader piece about the Burundian conflict and the how difficult it is for outsiders to engage fully with it. Making it was a profoundly affecting experience and has left us marked for ever with stories of those suffering the effects of violence in Burundi.

APATT at Southwark Cathedral – Photo: Harriet Stewart

And it’s true that it’s a difficult conflict to understand. It’s complicated, and can be traced back to colonialism and beyond. It is part of a wider set of regional conflicts. It’s a tangle of race, class and geography. But the need for peace and justice is simple, even if achieving them is not.

The Alliance for Justice, a campaign to end impunity for those who have committed atrocities in Burundi, The Democratic Republic of Congo and worldwide, has organised a vigil to mark the 15th anniversary of the Titanic Express massacre.

The time is right to increase the pressure on the international community as well as to commemorate a terrible loss. Please come along if you can. The details are here.

Titanic Express vigil, 3pm December 28th, Trafalgar Square, London – final details for those attending

Events Major Projects Participation Partners and Collaborators Research and Development

Going Beyond East

By DaedalusAdmin on Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Left to right: Farah Naz, Shamim Azad, Paul Burgess and Sef Townend. Photo credit: Indigo

East‘s behind-the-scenes organisational team met at Rich Mix to plan the next stages of the project. What started as a simple, short-term community storytelling project (led by Daedalus and Bishwo Shahitto Kendro, and supported by Rich Mix, the Arts Council and Apples and Snakes) has grown. With further support from the Arts Council plus some crowd-funding, we’re now making an online archive of our stories (and some songs) and working out how to support our storytelling group’s desire to do something longer-term, while also dealing with several offshoots of the project, including our work on radical history (which will probably now be treated as a separate project) and possible work with local schools and community centres. Oh and the events we’re planning as an offshoot of A Season of Bangla Drama. They’ll be in April. Watch this space…

All of which explains why the meeting was about three and a half hours long. We got through a lot of tea, but were very restrained and shared just one piece of cake between us.

Events Major Projects Partners and Collaborators Research and Development

Radical History: project definitely underway

By DaedalusAdmin on Monday, November 16, 2015

Thanks to Ovalhouse, the Arts Council and private funders, we had our first proper development period on our collaboration with The Black Smock Band: an undertaking which emerged from our East storytelling project but which seems to be taking on a life of its own. Temporarily known as The Radical History Project, it looks at the texts, oral and musical, left behind by our radical forbears and the mythology of English radicalism they created, while also searching out contemporary and local stories of struggle. We had a very productive week – well, it’d be shameful not, given the incredible wealth of material we have to work with. Our research so far has focused on the Diggers movement, but since we were working just yards away from where the Chartists gathered, we looked at them and at the challenges facing the area today. In fact, a modern-day version of the enclosures is taking place, with social housing being replaced by private developments.

The end-of-week sharing at Ovalhouse cafe seemed to go down well. There was even some dancing. And lots of helpful feedback – thanks everyone!

The team was Alex Swift, Andy Bannister, Dan Cox, John Bryden, Rhiannon Kelly and Paul Burgess.

IMG_5813-cropped

We’re still sorting out the documentation but, in the meantime, here’s a photo (credit: Kanatip Soonthornrak). And the project will be back for further research and development soon…

Events Major Projects Partners and Collaborators Research and Development

Radical History at Ovalhouse

By DaedalusAdmin on Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Radical_Hist_pubimg_draft01

Protest and rebellion are as English as rainy bank holidays, cream teas and plundering foreign countries. But plenty of people would have us ignore the great radical moments of our history.

As part of our commitment to exploring the potent mix of local stories and history, we have joined forces with The Black Smock Band – London’s premier gay socialist folk band (as far as they know) – to take a look at how out forebears fought the power, and what their stories mean today. By rediscovering the songs and ideas that helped change our country, we hope to find where all this turbulence and disorder could lead us today. We’ll be at Ovalhouse so you’ll also hear local stories of resistance, past and current.

This work-in-progress performance will start as a gig. If all goes well, it will end with the revolution we’ve all been waiting for.

November 6th, 9pm, Ovalhouse cafe, free

Facebook e vent

Ovalhouse website event

See you there!

The Company

We’ve become a charity, and that means…

By DaedalusAdmin on Tuesday, September 22, 2015

You know where this is going.

It’s taken ages. The Charity Commission. HMRC. Many, many forms to fill in. Lots of help from the awesome ITC. But we got there.

Now, probably, most people looking at this site are penniless artists. We don’t expect those people to give anything, of course (unless they really, really want to). But there may be people in a position to help. Why? We have to apply for funding for each project. It’s a lot of work and sometimes we’re successful, sometimes we’re not. Either way, project-by-project funding only goes so far. We don’t only want to exist when we’re doing a specific project. We’ve got the ongoing projects like the Radical Performance Reading Group and the East storytellers, and there’s all the research and development that needs to happen before we’re ready to start writing funding applications…

So if you can throw some pennies our way (or even throw some pennies our way on a monthly basis) here’s an attractive purple button to take you to our fund-raising page…

Thank you!

Events Participation

Daedalus Radical Performance Reading Group #8 Postcapitalism

By DaedalusAdmin on Thursday, September 10, 2015

DRPRG.8 – Postcapitalism: A Guide to our Future by Paul Mason
Date: Wednesday 21 October
Time: 7.30pm
Venue: Studio 180, 180 Lambeth Road, London (if you can’t make it in person you are very welcome to join us by Skype – drop us a message here with your skype name and we’ll call you when the group starts)

Facebook event here.

Events Major Projects Participation Partners and Collaborators

East social

By DaedalusAdmin on Monday, August 31, 2015

Members of the East storytelling group got together for an informal gathering yesterday, to catch up on on news, share food, discuss our plans for the future and – inevitably – tell some stories. (To those members who couldn’t make it – you were missed and we look forward to seeing you next time!) We’re currently between formal projects and waiting for the results of a funding application, but thanks to BSK, our main partner for East, we could meet in a local community space to keep the momentum going. All being well we have a creative few months ahead, including making a video archive of the stories we’ve told so far. Fingers crossed for funding. More information to follow as it happens…

Oh and it’s never too late for new people to get involved! Drop us a line.

Here are some photos.

Partners and Collaborators The Company

The Arches has closed

By DaedalusAdmin on Wednesday, June 10, 2015

The Arches went into administration today. The press release with all the details is here.

This is terrible on a great many levels.

It means the loss of an incredible venue which kick-started a a huge amount of careers and provided a fantastic starting point for a great many companies (including us, as our first professional piece, Selfish, was an Arches commission). It’s a loss for Glasgow of course, and Scotland, and for UK arts touring. It’s also a blow to a whole model of working. The Arches was an exemplar of the idea that a venue could generate a commercial income and use that to fund brave and experimental work. But now we can see that such a fine balance is impossible without proper support and joined-up thinking from the authorities. It’s pretty shocking, really, that such a vital arts venue could be lost because of the intransigence of the Glasgow Licensing Board.