Xavier de Sousa

Performance Maker, Curator, Culture Worker

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Encruzilhada de AURA, Dori Nigro e Xavier de Sousa Laboratórios 18 - 27 de Novembro na Casa d'Artes do Bonfim Performances 30 de Novembro no Café Asa de Mosca Almoço/Conversa 1 de Dezembro no Café Asa de Mosca LINK: https://www.culturaemexpansao.pt/sessao/encruzilhada/ Criado para esta edição do Cultura em Expansão, o projeto Encruzilhada é um espaço aberto às contradições, à intuição e às (im)possibilidades enquanto prática artística que junta as práticas identitárias, decoloniais e transfronteiriças de três artistas transdisciplinares residentes no Porto – Aura, Dori Nigro e Xavier de Sousa –, através de pesquisas, laboratórios, performances, partilhas, conversas e celebrações que convergem na dialogicidade e alteridade. Este primeiro encontro no Café Asa de Mosca decorre na sequência de três laboratórios abertos ao público – Fluxo, com Xavier de Sousa, Sexo e Morte: entre exercícios libidinais e liminares, com Aura, e Pedagogias de Resistência, com Dori Nigro – e tomará a forma de performances 1-a-1 entre artista e público com 30 minutos cada, a acontecer ao longo do dia. O projeto Encruzilhada culmina, no dia seguinte, com um almoço/conversa, no dia 1 de dezembro, entre as 13h e as 16h, no Café Asa de Mosca, com a participação de Rebecca Moradalizadeh. Curadoria de Ana Rocha, Ágora, Cultura em Expansão

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🎙️👩‍🍳Slow Cooking - A new multimedia podcast 🥘🌟

ALL EPISODES HERE

Featuring: Sonia Sandhu ✶ Selina Thompson ✶ Toni-Dee Paul ✶ Rebecca Moradalizadeh ✶ Guya ✶ Untethered Magic ✶ Estabrak / إستبرق performingborders and Theatre in the Mill are proud to present Slow Cooking, a new multimedia podcast exploring the relationship between art making processes, communal food practices and contemporary colonial impacts around food and environmentalism. In this first season, Xavier traveled to Bradford and London (UK), Porto (Portugal) and Ongata Rongai (Kenya) to spend the day buying food from local markets, then cooking together and sharing it with you while discussing what brings these artists to the table. In this project, the artists chew through a wide range of research and provocations: from art-making processes and food as a creative practice, to the impact of Western colonialism on seed-sharing practices and ancestral agriculture in indigenous communities in Kenya, and how the poetic relationship with pomegranates in West Asia has been co-opted by Western militarization in the region. Each episode is available in text, audio and video formats. To access these commissions - check the link in our bio and stories 🔗 Filmed on location with Kibe Wangunyu, Olive Mondegreen, Richard Warburton, Lydia Tissier, Baiba Sprance and Mobby Omori . Special thank yous to Daniel Pinheiro, Arlene Wandera and Munish Wadhia for taking part.

main image by Anna Corfa Commissioned by performingborders and Theatre in the Mill. Supported by Arts Council England, Untethered Magic, METAL Peterborough, HowlRound Theatre Commons.

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Slow Cooking Live

Food-sharing is an act deeply connected to our ideas of home, nourishment and community.

Slow Cooking Live are two special ‘An Evening with…’ style live events, with home-made food sharing and conversations with artists Selina Thompson and Toni-Dee Paul (Fri 14th) and Sonia Sandhu (Sat 15th).

Hosted by Xavier de Sousa and video work directed by Richard Warburton, SCL is a live podcast-video art experiment, inviting artists who have a history of migration and also work with food-making and food-sharing as creative tools. Together, they will spend the day buying food from local markets and independent shops, cook together and then travel to Theatre in the Mill to share it all with you.

Cooking recipes that are relevant to the guests’ own creative practices (or their favourite foods), Selina, Toni-Dee and Sonia discuss the origins of the food, the impact on their communities and how they have incorporated it into their creative practices.

These events will were broadcasted live on HowlRound Theatre Commons website, and you can watch the post-live stream here: https://howlround.com/happenings/slow-cooking-live

The events were recorded as part of the Slow Cooking project, which will be fully edited and released as a 5-part series of video and sound art works on the performingborders platform.

Art work by Anna Corfa.

Slow Cooking Live is commissioned by Theatre in the Mill and performingborders. Broadcast by HowlRound Theatre Commons, and live captions by National Captions Institute. Produced by Lee Smith with support from The Uncultured, and Project Managed by Lydia Tissier. Sound art by Olive Mondegreen

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What Becomes…

When you move somewhere, is the onus on you to adapt or others?and what becomes of us, over time over all these changing landscapes? 

What Becomes… is a new multidisciplinary exhibition by Xavier de Sousa that explores and exposes processes of adaptation that us migrants go through when moving to a new place, to a new community. 

Created in collaboration with members of the local Peterborough community, the project looks into how we change (in our souls, in our behaviour, in our language, in our bodies) as a result of co-existing in a new place, in a new culture. 

Blending pottery work, performance, writing and sound art, What Becomes… invites the audience to immerse themselves, experience and also contribute stories of adaptation processes. 

What Becomes…. is Xavier de Sousa’s first exhibition and continuing the collaboration with the communities of migrants and people seeking asylum based in Peterborough and Leeds, which started during their performance project REGNANT (2021). This new art experiment advances the collective-narrative approaches of that project and re-purposes all the clay work created for it, giving them new lives, in new contexts. 

6th - 29th of June Thursdays to Saturdays only Westgate Arcade, Queensgate Shopping Centre, 27 Westgate, Peterborough, PE1 1PY

Access information, including Easy Read Guides, can be found on the METAL Peterborough website here: https://metalculture.com/whats-on/what-becomes-by-xavier-de-sousa/

Credits: Created by Xavier de Sousa Sound work by Nicol Parkinson

With participation by Judita Gru, Madhu Manipatruni, Roshannak and Siamak Rezaei, and other members of the local migrant communities and people seeking asylum of Leeds and Peterborough.

Hosted by Xavier de Sousa, Sean Dendere, Jasmine Kelly-Gobuiwang & Fiona Cifaldi

Materials exhibited include art works, objects and designs created for REGNANT (2021) by Hannah Sibai, Lydia Tissier and Emmy Lahouel. Instalation tech and support by Stuart Payn

Produced by Lee Smith Strategic Producing by The Uncultured

Commissioned and hosted by METAL Peterborough, with support from East Street Arts Graphic design by Paper Rhino. Main pictures: stills from REGNANT: A short film by Sable Studio.

Special thank yous to Ruth Campbell, Jack Wilkin, Sarah Steenhorst, Daniel Pinheiro and Mark Richards.

Funded by Necessity Fund, Migrant Artists Projects CIC and using public funding by Arts Council England

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performingbordersLIVE23: Our Bodies in the Commons at Battersea Arts Centre

23th April 2024

After 3 years of digital transnational work we partnered with Battersea Arts Centre for an event to re-center our bodies in explorations of live art & borders. With participatory sessions led by our collaborators, ‘Our Bodies in the Commons’ moves away from disembodied and individualised discourse around solidarity and care, towards actions and gestures that are building and maintaining collective ways of working together. Session I: Dance & Embodied Movement by Camille Barton Opening the day with their embodied dance practice, Camille will re-focus our bodies and awareness of those around us, to process feelings deposited in our bodies to build more beautiful futures together. Session II: Rallying the Commons Reading Karaoke: Rustling Words with Youngsook Choi & live streamed on Howl Round Theatre Commons. Guiding us through our e-Journal #2, this session will include embodied interventions by guest contributors Ximena Alarcón-Diaz, Harun Morrison and Helena Walsh to activate its content and explore ways of working together. Closing off the event, we will screen our 2022 performance-to-camera in the room, bringing the previously only digitally-broadcasted piece to an encounter with our bodies and discussions in the live setting. Documentation, including pictures and the video broadcastings of the afternoon session can be found here: https://performingborders.live/performingborderslive23/performingborderslive23-programme-documentation/ Our Bodies in the Commons is presented and curated by performingborders with partners Battersea Arts Centre, InclusiveDigital, HowlRound Theatre commons and is funded by Arts Council England & Necessity

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Puzzling Home 家的形狀 by Ghost and John, Michael and Jane

Performance to Camera commissioned by Queer Arts Projects, Xavier de Sousa, Anahí Saravia Herrera and Alessandra Cianetti for performingborders 2023

Experience the full performance by clicking here

Queer Art Projects and performingborders responded to this commission through a conversation held in May 2023, to see this response alongside the performance to camera, see HERE.

Two travellers arrive at a black and white sandy beach. Carried with them are all shapes of all sizes, holding visions of their former lives. These memories are mismatched and misaligned, yet all together form a picture we fantasise as “home”.

Accompanied by a poem built up by collaging Cantopop lyrics, this performance-to-camera work looks at the figurative of live performances’ ephemerality and the disappearance of home. We witnessed how meanings break and disintegrate in the face of feelings. With shared lived experiences in activism and migration, we form a puzzle designed to be disassembled. 

Let heartbreaks be sufferable

Production credits: Concept: Ghost and John, Michael and Jane  Film Editing: Michael Mui Ting Fai Sound Mixing: Ghost Chan Poem Collage and Translation: Jane Lam, John Chan Cinematography: Ivan Wong and his film crew Body Paint: Lau Hiu Tung Performance: Ghost and John

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performingborders x Central School of Speech & Drama Collaborative Doctoral Award

Border-artists: Critiquing border logics in transnational digital performance Supervised by Dr Diana Damian Martin (Royal Central School of Speech and Drama) and performingborders (Xavier de Sousa, Alessandra Cianetti & Anahí Saravia Herrera)

Fully funded by London Arts & Humanities Partnership (LAHP)

The application process is now concluded and the award recipient as been selected. More to be announced soon.

performingborders and Central School of Speech and Drama are proud to announce a new fully funded Collaborative Doctoral Award (PhD), now open to application by any prospective student interested in borders, digital performance, live art and transnational research. This PhD looks at the reproduction and revisioning of borders in contemporary transnational digital performance. Its objective is to develop a method of analysis — ‘border work’ – that captures the complex artistic and political processes that shape contemporary transnational digital performance, its production and curation, advancing new imaginaries for migrant-led social change. Starting from the performingborders archive, this CDA examines the development, curation, and outcome of digital performances by migrant artists of colour working in the UK and internationally, exploring how borders are experienced and how they become a space of fluidity and agency, rather than violence and separation. As the focus of this studentship is on border-work, this application is open to candidates with lived experience of migration.

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performingborders e-Journal #2 Rallying The Commons

Curator, Producer

Rallying the Commons is here – we couldn’t be more excited to share our second e-journal! 

READ the e-journal HERE

The performingborders e-journal is a space to reflect on borders, live art, community, and resistance. Centering embodied knowledge and artists’ imagination as a space of knowledge production, the e-journal is a site to nourish and connect thinking and working practices. The theme of this year’s journal: Rallying the Commons stems from the process of rallying together, of commoning and communing, for the creation of something better and the maintenance of other ways of being. It is a movement away from disembodied discourse towards actions and gestures that let us consider what we can do when we harness our resources, time, bodies, and care, to collectivize them. 

In the e-journal, you’ll find contributions from artists and activists working across cultural and political spaces. We are excited to share sonic listening rituals by Ximena Alarcón-Díaz and Sheila Ghelani’s tender reflections on care in the art sector. Helena Walsh reflects on the role of feminist organising and art activist groups within an Irish context. Harun Morrison shares his collaboration with horticulturist Antonia Couling and their work The Anchor, The Drum, The Ship.Elif Sarican and Dilar Dirik write on hevaltî- revolutionary friendship reflecting  on the Kurdish Women’s Movement. Lara Khaldi from The Question of Funding  shares with us community-centered funding models and the use of Dayra within their project in Palestine. And we close with a Budget Commission by Jack Ky Tan who has been reflecting with us on  budgets, value systems and thinking beyond numbers. We hope that within these words, sounds, images, and gestures you find echoes of resistance that allow us to continue the necessary work of imagining other worlds. 

performingborders e-Journal #2 Rallying The Commons

Curated and Edited by Xavier de Sousa, Anahí Saravia Herrera and Alessandra Cianetti. Designed by Rodrigo Nava Ramírez Social Media and Design support: Anna Corfa

Thank you to our friends at the Necessity Fund and to Arts Council England for supporting this work.

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WE NEED QUEER LIBERATION NOW!

East Street Arts, Migrant Actions Productions, performingborders

Participant

In Summer 2022, the We Need Queer Liberation Now! residency gathered a collective of artists from the Middle East, North Africa and Europe to explore digitally 'What does Queer liberation mean to you?' Grids on a screen, one artist on the programme said, keep people separate in neat little boxes. They are solid boundaries. But they can also form a net, and our group became a web of solidarity and community care, through the generosity, compassion, and openness of our artists and facilitators.

Collective dreaming, resting, holding, healing.

Later many of us acknowledged that the connection we’d created as a group, and the levels of intimacy we’d built, perhaps would not have been possible had we been in-person.

The outcome of the residency included a series of new art works, south baths and new writing which can be found here: https://performingborders.live/residences/we-need-queer-liberation-now/

More information on the project and its artists: https://eaststreetarts.org.uk/article-type/wnqln/

Artists involved: Teddy, Nahi Mitti, Axmed Maxamed, Roland Korponovics, Xavier De Sousa, Vee Dagger, Metin Akdemir, Keith Zenga King.

We Need Queer Liberation Now is an international residency and artist support project from East Street Arts and Theatre In The Mill, facilitated by Leeds-based artist Sayang and funding from the European Culture Foundation. It includes queer artists based across Europe, Middle East and North Africa. The responses here presented are commissioned by East Street Arts and Migrant Actions Productions for performingborders, as a result of a week-long online residency around the themes of care.

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It is impossible to say everything here so I leave you with this SERAFINE1369

Performance to Camera commissioned by Xavier de Sousa, Anahí Saravia Herrera & Alessandra Cianetti for performingborders.

Watch the full Performance to Camera here

It is recommended that you play with speakers or headphones as sound features low bass.

The commission comes with an accompanying text to be read or listened to after and/or whilst watching the commission: read & listen here.

I am thinking about skin, as boundary, as border site – for exchange, the manifestation of internal and external happenings and also the largest organ of our bodies and as such, a place of messages. Skin is involved in balance, orientation, relation…Skin as interface.

Skin is an organ that speaks to me loudly, a site of sensitivity, protection, defence, warning signs, as well as communing and absorbing resource from sun and other skin foods. Sun is a big thing for me, a site of particular interest, resonance, astrological affinity and a constant craving as a body formed for another climate born onto this non-tropical island. 

This was a dance for the outside, with the outsides of myself up against, in relation to, distinct surfaces, visible and invisible touching. Thinking about communication, connection and ways of being together that are flowing and intimate and influential without being overstated or stated explicitly, thinking about exposure and sensation of what is there, not being described in language or conventional social gesture.

I am practicing sensing, through skin and slowness – what is there, what is passing through, what is coming up and out and this a kind of threshold crossing/traversing/dancing state of holding or opening or clearing space or trying to become space. Trying to feel and listen out for voices away from/between/around language. Internal and external. Central and peripheral. In exchange. Receiving and releasing. Distinct and entangled. Always moving.

I chose not to shoot any new footage for this commission, and to work with what was already t/here, an attempt to unravel and elaborate on/from/through this archive footage, bound in time. This is part of a project towards consciously recycling, working with transforming or reframing relationships to past works, the words and objects and movements that are formed and left behind like hollowed out shells. Being with the cyclical, chaotic and irregular flows of time, like weather, moving in relation affecting and responding.

This video work is accompanied by a small edition of 10 handmade body butters, continuing the conversation with skin as border and as interface. To receive one please send an email request to  [email protected] with your address, and also any known allergies

Concept, choreography, performance SERAFINE1369 Camera Katarzyna Perlak Edit SERAFINE1369 Sound Josh Anio Grigg Voice SERAFINE1369

Featuring documentation from performance ‘I I I (something flat, something cosmic, something endless)’ commissioned by Liverpool Biennial and performed at The Bluecoat, 2021 Accompanying text edited by SERAFINE1369 featuring contributions from Alice MacKenzie, Anouk Thériault, Antonija Livingstone, Fernanda Muñoz-Newsome, Harun Morrison, Jamila Johnson-Small, Nissa Nishikawa, Phoebe Collings-James, Zinzi Buchanan. Please note: If you can’t watch the video above, please try this Vimeo link here.

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of whiplash and hope - 2021 review

A blog on events of 2021 and reflections on hope and rage as healing processes. LINK HERE

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performingborders 2021

Throughout 2021, the performingborders team spent a big part of our time reflecting and changing how we work, what the intentions of the work are and what we, as curators and culture workers want to explore.

Internationalism, solidarity and horizontality were some of the new ways we have started to look at not just how we operate but how we collaborate with our partners, our friends and the artists we commission.

We got a new team member, Anahi Saravia Herrera, who is a brilliant writer and has changed PB from the inside out. With this new dynamic, we were able to commission some of our favourite artists to create new performances to camera, bi-monthly newsletters, our own reflections, interviews and our very first e-Journal - the first of its kind for migrant artists.

Below is a breakdown of the work we released this year. If you’d like to get more familiar with performingborders, please visit our website and sign up to our bi-monthly newsletter.

Commissions:

Spells for a border town (retrocedare) by Diana Damian Martin (LINK)

Long term collaborator of PB Diana dives into the   entanglement between a receding process and de-colonial practices in  Eastern Europe, paying attention not only to the territorial  but to the temporal. Her collaboration with Rusanda Curcă, Mihaela Drăgan, and Iulia  Mărăcine gifts us the wonderful “Spells for a border town (retrocedare)”  with interviews and a series of spells against fascists, against the  states, for independence, for the future, and much more. Text and audio. English, Romani and Romanian languages.

Recipes for Autonomy by Syowia Kyambi (LINK)

Our friend Syowia (based in Nairobi, Kenya), shares an episode on ‘Unthethered Magic’  by Sauti Msituni, an independent radio station hosted by Kibe Wangunyu  and Dennis Kiberu, as well as gifting us an advice booklet from the  collective ‘what the hEll she doin’ where  we hear from the artists Usha Seejarim, Immy Mali, Sonia E. Barrett and  Kyambi herself. The issue closes with an ongoing conversation between  Syowia Kyambi, Kijo Agacuand, and Sibonelo Gumede titled ‘(In)Formal Frission: Another Conversation’.

Shifting Landscapes by Xavier de Sousa, Alessandra Cianetti and Anahi Saravia Herrera (LINK)

Coming  together to explore our own researches together, we digested ideas of  collectivity, horizontally, and open language through four reflections: Alessandra wrote A journal, Un diario, Xavier interviewed choreographer Dinis Machado in On temporalities and process of transformation, and Anahi wrote Entre acá y allá, Encuentros Solitarios.  We were also joined by Istanbul Queer Art Collective who reflected on  “automation and possession in live art and performance” in their text  Whatever Possessed You To Perform? as a part of an ongoing collaboration  and conversation that performingborders is having with the Performance, Possession & Automation project.

performingborders e-Journal #1: fragments for borderless futures (LINK)

We hope that this will be the first in a yearly series, creating a  space to collectively reflect on borders, live art, community, and  resistance. We want these journals to be a space that centres  embodied knowledge and artist perspectives and we are launching the  first issue with text contributions from Elena Marchevska, Syowia Kyambi, Jade Montserrat, Vijay Mathew, Jemima Yong and Sagar Shah. These sit alongside new commissioned works, including a place to sit, a performative reflection by Tara Fatehi Irani as well as a visual essay titled urgent images by Manuel Vason. To be experienced as a whole. Curated by Xavier de Sousa, Alessandra Cianetti and Anahi Saravia Herrara.

Amnion by Lynn Lu (LINK)

This new performance to camera thinks through hydrofeminism and  reflects on water as an agent that connects all watery bodies - living,  creature, hydrogeological and meteorological. In this work, Lu  considers the relationship between water, life-giving, and menopause as  liquid processes of change. There is a leakiness to all borders:  between each other, between humans and the environment, between humans  and creatures, and in our own watery selves. Conceived, written, narrated & performed by: Lynn Lu; Directed, filmed, edited by Ana de Matos; Second performer: Satsuki Lu-Sharpe

performingborders is curated by Xavier de Sousa, Alessandra Cianetti and Anahi Saravia Herrera. Supported by Migrant Actions Productions, Necessity Fund and Arts Council England.

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We Need Queer Liberation Now

On-going digital project

We Need Queer Liberation Now, an international residency and artist support project from East Street Arts and Theatre In The Mill, and facilitated by Leeds-based artist Sayang.

The project gathers artists based in Taiwan, Turkey, Netherlands, Somalia, Portugal, and others.

In 2021 the We Need Queer Liberation Now project partners commissioned a series of digital residencies and gatherings asking the question, “What does Queer liberation mean to you?”. As part of this process, each artist was invited to create a response to the themes and process.

Accompanying each commission is an audio recording of an interview between Sayang and each artist, reflecting on the work created and containing a message to the rest of the group. In 2022 our activity as a group will focus on creating spaces for togetherness & kinship.

WNQLN Artists: Teddy, Nahi Mitti, Axmed Maxamed, Roland Korponovics, Xavier De Sousa, Vee Dagger, Metin Akdemir, Keith Zenga King.

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Residency at East Street Arts

Part of REGNANT project and Season for Change programme, ‘The Space Between’.

Throughout this long residency (6weeks,) Xavier learned from scratch how to throw pottery on the wheel and created 398 clay pots and 125 spoons, which were then part of the performance of REGNANT at HOME (27th November).

Throughout the residency, Regnant involved participants from local East Leeds neighbourhoods and the audience, who have experiences of migration and seeking asylum. The participants explored the themes of migration, identity, belonging, adaptation and power structures and how these collide with the pressing issue of climate change. Together, they created pottery plates, bowls, and serving pots needed for Xavier’s final live event.

Check out an interview with ESA here: https://www.eaststreetarts.org.uk/2021/11/17/regnant-an-interview-with-xavier-de-sousa/

Residency and commission by East Street Arts

With funding and support from Seasons for Change, ArtsAdmin and Arts Council England.

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REGNANT

Premiéred at HOME, Manchester, 27 November 2021, 3pm-9pm

“Homesickness is never going away because you miss your childhood, not necessarily your country”.

REGNANT is an ever growing performance installation, a dinner party with the guests diving into how we interact with each other within the context of migration and belonging.

It is composed live with you, our guests, and patrons at the cental table. Almost all the materials present on stage, from the pottery to the decoration and the food, have been created by hand for you.

Xavier de Sousa is The Host Yas Clarke is The Maestro Jade Montserrat is The Scribbe An* Neely is The Server Sonia Sandhu is The Cook Lighting Design by Tarrek Wilks Set Design by Hannah Sibai Produced by Ash Bowmott and Laura Sweeney for The Uncultured

REGNANT is developed with METAL Culture, East Street Arts (Leeds), Theatre in The Mill (Bradford), Live Collision International Festival, Abbey Theatre – National Theatre of Ireland (Ireland). Additional funding by Arts Council England.

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Pós-

Em colaboração com Fado Bicha, Puta da Silva e Gabriela Gomes

Premiere no Teatro do Bairro Alto, Lisboa, 23 a 26 de Setembro, 2021

Quem somos “nós”, hoje?

Esta é a pergunta no centro do novo espetáculo de Xavier de Sousa. De Montemor-o-Velho a Londres, após 16 anos noutro país brutalmente construído à custa do colonialismo e imperialismo, Xavier representa uma comunidade pouco visível: os imigrantes que vivem entre línguas diferentes e olham para Portugal de fora para dentro.

Entre fado, caldo verde e chouriço, em Pós- o espectador é o convidado e na ementa serve-se uma história e cultura construídas ao longo de 600 anos de colonialismo. A narrativa faz-se à mesa numa partilha e diálogo coletivo sobre o racismo, a construção do nacionalismo português, a identidade do imigrante e a permanência das heranças coloniais. Agora que estamos fisicamente distantes, esta reunião pode servir para refletirmos sobre o passado e celebrar um possível futuro coletivo.

Conceção Xavier de Sousa Codramaturgia, consultadoria e produção Ana Rocha Desenho de luz Luís Silva Participação especial Fado Bicha, Puta da Silva, Gabriela Gomes (Casa T) Fotografias e Vídeo Ana Rocha Edição de vídeo Hugo Barbosa Coprodução Foreign Actions Productions, Sekoia – artes performativas, Citemor, Teatro do Bairro Alto Agradecimentos Pedras & Pêssegos, Alcont, Casa Arménio e mala voadora,Teatro do Frio

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NEW QUEERS ON THE BLOCK

New Queers on the Block is the Marlborough Productions’ artist and community development programme.

Throughout the pandemic, we commissioned and supported the following projects:

COMMUCRACY NOW!  a short film and manifesto by Oozing Gloop

Stomach Full a new zine by Rachael Young

Now in its fourth year, New Queers on the Block proposes a bold new vision for how LGBTQIA+ culture is supported across England. Bringing together arts partners in Bradford, Blackpool, Hastings, Folkestone and Brighton.

For our next phase, we will be commissioning performance artists to embark on a 6-month development period with, crucially, no expectation to deliver a show or other fixed outcome at the end. In addition to financial support, commissioned artists will benefit from residency space, mentoring, access support, and professional guidance in producing, marketing and community engagement from Marlborough Productions and its national partners.

Since New Queers on the Block was established in 2018, the initiative has supported the artistic development of a number of innovative and exciting LGBTQIA+  performers. The project has developed, produced and toured new performances from Oozing Gloop, Malik Nashad Sharpe, Rachael Young, Harry Clayton-Wright, mandla rae, Subira Joy, Jackie Hagan and many more - working across live art, theatre, dance, cabaret, film, spoken word and visual art. 

The New Queers on the Block Team Xavier de Sousa: Creative Producer Tarik Elmoutawakil: Artistic Director Rasheed Rahman: Marketing Manager Lee Smith: Producer David Sheppeard: Executive Producer

Art B&B and LeftCoast in Blackpool, Bradford Producing Hub and Theatre in the Mill in Bradford, Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts in Brighton, ]performance s p a c e[ and Creative Folkestone in Folkestone; Home Live Art in Hastings, Cambridge Junction in Cambridge and Unlimited. New Queers on the Block is funded by Arts Council England and Esmée Fairbairn Foundation.