Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been meeting with so many artists to talk about their ideas. This has to be the best part of my job - when an artist shares with you the starting point for their next artistic adventure you also find out what is important to them, as people, living in today’s society, in this world. It really is an extraordinary position to be in and I’m very grateful that people want to talk to me about it.

A few weeks ago – just before my trip to Korea – I spent a day with John and Geoff Cripps from RCT Theatres, hunkered down in the Max Boyce Room of the Park and Dare Theatre, valleys weather beating down on the window pane. We met with lots of artists (as many as 9 at once!) and discussed 11 entirely different projects. They’d all been submitted to WalesLab over the previous few of months from artists at all stages of their careers, with expertise in vastly different practices: performance installation, writing and devising theatre, choreography and some circus! Many wanted to continue to develop a practice or in some cases shift in an entirely different direction, all wanted to focus on unpicking, interrogating and holding up an idea for discussion. As well as the differences, we were surprised to find several themes running through a lot of the work, themes that were undetectable when they submitted their ideas but now so apparent.

Anyway, we decided we would be able to support 4 projects through WalesLab. I’ll be asking each of the groups/artists concerned to put something on the community in the next few weeks as they will do a much better job of introducing themselves than I would be able to. But for the time being, this will give you an idea of who they are and what they’ll be up to:

Nerea Martinez de Lecea and Michele Woodey – The Ballad of Ivor Jones - a multimedia performance event comprised of video, performance, objects and images. This project gives voice to the story of over 100,000 British children who were transported to Canada to become British Home Children (BHC).

Rebecca Louise Collins - Re-imagining Llanbedrog - recuperating oral histories and memories of a Welsh seaside town to create a playful audio-based performance.

Catherine Dyson – Slideshow - is the story of the unravelling of a family, told through the frame of a slideshow presentation. It is a combination of live performance, still image and sound.

Tin Shed Theatre (Justin Cliffe, Antonio Rimola and Georgina Harris) – The Old Man – development around their idea for a new performance drawing on personal stories and the collective wisdom of the older generations.

If you are cooking up a project, that is looking at uncovering new ideas for performance, I’d encourage you to get in contact and see if WalesLab could help. Our next shortlisting period will be at the end of November. More info here.