Live Art in Scotland

The Live Art in Scotland project sets out to write a major, missing chapter in the history of experimental arts and cutting-edge performance in the UK, and use that knowledge to inform debates about the future of creative risk-taking as the engine of cultural innovation. Though Scotland has been home to much of the UK's most striking and innovative Live Art (characterised by experimental, experiential and time-based practices) through events such as the National Review of Live Art, existing scholarship on theatre and performance has emphasised a literary dramatic tradition.

This means that a significant body of cultural practice - often working in advance of existing styles and tastes to explore new possibilities for the relationship between art and everyday life - has been overlooked to date. This project counters that absence while asking how a history of Live Art in Scotland might inform a broader understanding of the infrastructures needed to foster, support and sustain experimental work in uncertain times.

If the future of the UK's cultural economies - and our prosperity as a whole - is tied to creative innovation, how best to support artists and cultural workers seeking new forms and models for artistic expression? How can practitioners, funding bodies and cultural institutions work together to create space for new languages, ideas and strategies for representation?

This project answers those questions by synthesizing archival research in major UK collections with a wide-ranging series of oral history interviews. The first element involves engaging with a range of personal and institutional records in collections across Scotland and the rest of the UK - in the first instance, the Scottish Theatre Archive, the Third Eye / Centre for Contemporary Arts collection and the National Review of Live Art collection.

Materials spanning documentation of performances, programming practices, funding applications and personal correspondence drawn from these sources will underpin a materialist account of the conditions through which Live Art has been developed and staged in Scotland. In doing so, the research will consider the relationships between individual artists, groups and the different kinds of institutions working to support and present their work - including building-based organisations or venues like The Arches, funding agencies like Creative Scotland (and its precursor the Scottish Arts Council) alongside festivals like New Territories or the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

This archival work will be extended and counterpointed through a series of oral history interviews with Live Art practitioners from across the sector, bringing well-established voices into conversation with other informants including those sometimes omitted from 'official' accounts (including producers, programmers, stage managers and technical theatre workers). Edited excerpts from these interviews will be released as a free podcast series, offering an easy point of access to the project's engagement with Scotland's rich history of experimental performance.

Beyond contributing a missing chapter to the history of theatre, performance and experimental arts in Scotland - and the UK as a whole - this research aims to inform cultural policy discussions concerning 'resilience' in the creative sector (meaning the ways in which cultural and creative workers respond and adapt to sudden changes or 'shocks' such as venue closures or losses to funding). To this end, the PI will collaborate with academic researchers, institutional policy-makers and arts practitioners from across the sector - developing a new major monograph on the history of Live Art in Scotland, and leading a series of symposia and public forums.

A unique micro-publication 'zine will reproduce materials drawn from the project's archives alongside specially commissioned artist contributions, and be made available as a free publication online and at key festivals and venues across the UK.