We are thrilled that Producer Farm is returning to Coombe Farm Studios in Devon for 2021.
Kicking off Sunday 20 June, the week-long residency for Creative Producers is a joint initiative by Dance Umbrella, Fuel, Bristol Old Vic Ferment, In Between Time and Coombe Farm Studios. Now in its sixth year, the programme aims to provide time and space for ten UK based producers who have been working professionally in contemporary performance for the past 10-15 years and wish to expand their capacity and capabilities as creative producers.
Previous speakers have included Cesc Casadesus (Mercat de les Flors), Inua Ellams (Poet and Playwright), Jenny Sealy (Graeae), Tania Harrison (Latitude), Craig Hassal (Royal Albert Hall), Magda Osman (Queen Mary University), Selina Thompson & Emma Beverley (Artist and Producer) and Stella Kanu (LIFT Festival). Participants in previous Producer Farm programmes include Katherine Jewkes (Freelance Curator & Creative Director), Daniel Kok (Cambridge Junction), Lisa Maguire (National Theatre Wales) and Jackie Wylie (National Theatre of Scotland).
The Producer Farm 2021 participants are:
Chloe Courtney
Chloe Courtney is the Health and Science Producer at Contact in Manchester, an arts venue which supports young people to become creative leaders. Chloe produces and programmes work that explores health and science topics.
Claire Teasdale
A Freelance Producer and consultant interested in outdoor, inclusive, socially engaged practice. Claire specialises in producing outdoor arts that promotes and delivers good access and inclusion.
Emily Coleman
Emily is an independent theatre producer with over 15 years experience in the industry. Since 2014 she’s worked with the internationally renowned Spymonkey to create and present their mid-scale productions, alongside managing the company and overseeing their artist training programme.
Faith Dodkins
Faith is an experienced producer working across artforms, making and delivering projects since 2005. Faith has been Executive Producer with TalkShow (formally TOOT) since 2012 and Co-Artistic Director of The Spire since 2013.
Laura Drane
Laura is passionate about people, causes and ideas that make positive impacts, working to achieve these through creative producing, consultancy, and facilitation. Laura is a core member of two artist-led companies: Light Ladd & Emberton, Wales’ foremost dance collective; and Gentle/Radical, a hyperlocal arts-and-community-development company, who have just been nominated for the Turner Prize.
Lily Einhorn
Lily Einhorn is an artistic and strategic consultant, creative and cultural producer, writer, and coach. She specialises in community and participatory arts. Organisations Lily has worked with recently include Stratford East, ENO, Studio 3 Arts, Crafts Council, Company of Others, Bounce, Donmar & CPT.
Natasha Player
Natasha Player & Co. has evolved out of Natasha Player’s 20 years experience as a freelance creative, producer, & project manager and since 2019, an independent changemaker. Natasha is dedicated to creating change and increasing ethnically diverse representation in the arts.
Reena Kalsi
Having been a freelance artist for many years and then a Producer, Reena understands both sides of making work. Now at Artsadmin, Reena’s work is concentrated on support for artists; creating projects, free opportunities, and holding space for underrepresented groups.
Shihui Weng
Shihui Weng is a creative producer, cultural broker and English – Chinese translator based in London. Shihui is the Director of Tempest Projects Limited providing cultural consultation, producing and representation for theatre, dance and live performances.
Tracky Crombie
Tracky Crombie (she/her) is an independent creative Producer and Programmer with over 11 years experience working in the creative and cultural sector in London and the UK. Tracky has undertaken roles ranging from programming festivals, to making a community centre fully accessible, producing companies & organisations to one off films & events.
Speakers for Producer Farm 2021 are:
Alex Mecklenburg
Alex is a certified and experienced business coach. After a successful career of 20+ years in the creative industries, Alex decided to leverage all of her experiences, knock-backs, bounce-backs and learnings and focus on helping others to shape their own professional journeys. She is working with professionals, leaders, CEOs and boards of organisations who are all looking to break through their own perception bubble and help them to explore how to lead successful, resilient and responsible professional lives in a world of perpetual change. Alex is also the co-founder of Truth&Spectacle, a creative business consultancy who work with organisations to examine their organisational truth and how this translates across everything they create to stay authentic whilst growing. Alex is also an associate at the digital think tank Doteveryone, a fellow of the RSA, and storyteller in residence at SIX, the Global Social Innovation Exchange.
François Matarasso
François Matarasso is a community artist, writer and researcher. Between 1979 and 1994 he worked in theatre and visual art with communities in London and the English Midlands. He subsequently began to explore the theory, experience and outcomes of people’s participation in art through research, such as Use or Ornament? (1997). His work has been widely published and translated. He has served as trustee of NESTA, Arts Council England and the Baring Foundation and held honorary professorships in the UK and Australia.
He continues to combine community arts practice with research and writing, and has worked in many countries, from Colombia to Kyrgyzstan. Between 2011 and 2015 he produced a series of short books on undervalued areas of cultural life under the collective title Regular Marvels. His latest book A Restless Art, How participation won and why it matters, was published by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in 2019. He is a partner in TRACTION a Horizon 2020 project linking community opera and digital technology.
arestlessart.com / @arestlessart
Gaylene Gould
Gaylene is a Creative Director, broadcaster and writer who designs interactive art projects and spaces that generously connect us with ourselves, each other and the world. She explores the healing and growth potential of sharing space, stories, ideas and knowledge through her artistic, writing and consultancy practice. She believes the transcendent moments that art and culture creates can change how we are in the world. Her projects have been commissioned by and performed at the Tate, V&A, Arts Catalyst, Vivid Projects, Selfridges, h club, Moderna Museet Sweden and BAM, New York. Her projects are produced by her creative company The Space to Come.
She is also an arts broadcaster for the BBC, a published fiction writer, a facilitator, cultural reviewer and a Cultural Ambassador for London appointed by Mayor Sadiq Khan. She has been a cultural leader for 25 years heading up major cultural institutions and projects including Head of Cinemas at BFI Southbank and producing, programming and consulting for the Arts Council, Toronto International Film Festival, National Theatre, Young Vic and Bernie Grant Art Centre amongst others. She is on the Artistic Advisory Board for Brixton House, the Advisory Board for the Decolonising Arts Institute, University Arts London and a Trustee for ANU Productions.
Lou Platt
Lou Platt is a UK based pioneer of Artist Wellbeing. Being an Artist Wellbeing Practitioner is a unique synthesis of Lou’s 16 years working as a qualified & registered integrative therapist, clinical supervisor and independent theatre maker/performer.
Through use of compassionate therapeutic techniques, open dialogue and psycho-education, Lou strives to enable artists to not only take radical care of their mental health and wellbeing, but to also reach and maintain their fullest creative potential.
Lou has worked as an Artist Wellbeing Practitioner within theatre, film, TV, dance, visual arts, writing and the music industries .
For quality assurance, Lou is registered with the Health Care Professions Council, is a member of the British Association of Dramatherapists and has public liability insurance. She regularly takes her artist wellbeing practice to clinical/process supervision, and also engages in Continual Professional Development through on-going certified training and learning practices.
Rachel Nelken
Rachel’s 20+ years in the creative sector have included work with many high-profile and grassroots arts organisations designing, developing, and running creative programmes for communities, developing artists, producing events and shows, and working with strategic music funders, including setting up and developing the PRS Foundation for New Music in 1999. Recent senior roles in the performing arts as a programmer and producer include Head of Creative Programmes at The Albany in Deptford from 2017-2019, leading a team of producers managing the theatre’s youth and community engagement and award-winning gig programmes. As Senior Producer at the Roundhouse in Camden, she led on many high-profile productions including collaborations with the Royal Opera House, Akram Khan Company and Daniel Kitson, Imogen Heap’s Reverb Festival, and three editions of the UK’s largest spoken word festival, The Last Word. In 2008 she developed the ArtsTrain programme offering creative music-making opportunities to young people across Bromley, Bexley, and Lewisham, which joined the Arts Council’s National Portfolio in 2018.
Syrus Marcus Ware
Syrus Marcus Ware is a Vanier scholar, visual artist, activist, curator and educator. Syrus uses drawing, installation and performance to explore social justice frameworks and black activist culture, and he’s shown widely in galleries and festivals across Canada. He is part of the Performance Disability Art Collective and a core-team member of Black Lives Matter – Toronto. He has won several recognitions including the TD Diversity Award 2017, “Best Queer Activist” NOW Magazine 2005, and the Steinert and Ferreiro Award 2012. He is the co-editor or the best-selling Until We Are Free: Reflections on Black Lives Matter in Canada (URP, 2020).
Yemisi Mokuolu, founder & CEO of Hatch Ideas Worldwide and Hatch Africa
Yemisi is an accomplished and highly regarded creative industries consultant and independent producer supporting people and organisations develop their amazing cultural change and social impact businesses, projects and ideas. She is best known as the founder of “Out of Africa” through which she hosted some of the UK’s largest and most prominent African arts festivals and live events. To date, she is the co-founder of the “Asa Baako festival” in Ghana, co-founder “Five Cowries Arts Education Initiative” in Nigeria and co-producer “Oliva Tweest: An Afrobeats Musical” in the UK. Her further credits include festival production for Shoreditch Trust, Amnesty International at Edinburgh Fringe and for the boroughs of Camden, Tower Hamlets and Kensington & Chelsea. As a consultant, her clients have included; Arts Council England, British Council, Goethe-Institute, Historic England, Institut-français and Kings College London.
