I’m chuffed to bits in announcing that after a grueling summer of application-slaving…SLAP, Lola Maury and Clout have ALL been granted Arts Council Funding in support of some truly exciting work going on throughout the UK.

Salacious Live Alternative Performance: embark on a series of four FREE (or near as!) Live-Art events in York running from November to December. This all kicks off next Saturday with SLAPover; hosting a collection of 6 artists occupying Salt and Powell art gallery for 3 days and nights – culminating in a sharing of work on November 1st. We’re teaming up with York Theatre Royal to present some Live Art performances in SLAPsolo later this month. Embracing guerrilla public performance and film-making in December, we’ll be putting a call-out for artists to take part in December’s SLAPpy New Year showcasing movies at miniature cinema 1331, before hosting an arts-based forum and speaker-led discussion that same month within SLAPchat. All good stuff and such an exciting prospect to bring a bit of punk performance to York.

Lola Maury: begins R+D creation on her piece Duels (working title), which is being commissioned by The Place and supported by organisations in and outside of London – including The Place, Central School of Speech and Drama, Birbeck University, Trip Space, Lost Dog Dance and South East Dance. We all meet as a creative team for dinner in November and lay seeds for ideas to germinate before beginning the activity in January. I’m excited about this project with the foundations already grounded through the ‘Hot House’ scheme, which has opened some far-out proposals for how a producer and artist work together.

Clout Theatre: are in Residency at Jackson’s Lane and Battersea Arts Centre after spending the summer at Theatre Madrassa in Izmir Turkey, and a then embarking on a wild adventure at the Beijing Fringe Festival. They will unveil new work, Feast, based on our relationship with plastic-wrapped food and supermarket consumerism in November. More to come on this as the R+D continues. The piece currently has no vocal sounds, is entirely silent, but this might change. Feast comes into fruition for a final work-in-progress alongside the redeveloped The Various Lives – tackling suicide and the afterlife; mixing a strange collection of middle road characters with sick humour and very dark clowning. I think we’re in for a treat.

So, lot’s going on and I find myself resurfacing from the swamps of emails/paperwork every now and then to see some superb theatre. Namely Oh I Cant Be Bothered, the new piece from Rash Dash which burrowed deep into my chest and hasn’t escaped yet.

And – now all the work really begins.