A lot of the lovely folks we work with have new stuff going out into the world real soon:

What Becomes...
Xavier de Sousa

6-29 June 2024
Thursdays to Saturdays (various times)
METAL Peterborough, PE1 1PY

A new interactive exhibition made in collaboration with Nicol Parkinson and migrant communities in Peterborough and Leeds.

The exhibition explores the processes of adaptation that migrants go through when moving to a new place and to a new community.

“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?”

Created in collaboration with members of the Peterborough community, Xavier explains that 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 their stories of adaptation.

TOPS
Amy Pennington

TRANSlations Film Festival, Seattle
In-person screening: ArkLodge Cinemas at 4.15pm, then online 6-9th June

**North American premiere!**

Plus more screenings tba soon!

Slow Cooking Live
Xavier de Sousa

Friday 14th & Saturday 15th June, 8pm
Theatre in the Mill, Bradford
Live Broadcasting at HowlRound TV

Tickets are free with food and drinks provided
Spaces are very limited, so please book up!
Link to book your space: https://forms.gle/6PCjN5oTUQaewz9q8

Hosted by Xavier de Sousa and video work directed by Richard Warburton, Slow Cooking Live 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 artistic practices (or their favourite foods), Selina, Toni-Dee and Sonia will discuss the origins of the food, the impact on their communities and how they have incorporated it into their creative practices.

Another year has passed and it’s been a busy one. We celebrated 3 years of working together and spent only 6 days physically in the same room as each other - how’s that for remote work-wifery!

In 2023 we worked with this bloomin wonderful group of folks...in alphabetical order: Amy Pennington, Brian Lobel, Creative Newhaven, Duckie, Malik Nashad Sharpe and Xavier de Sousa.

We finally shared the results of a few long-term self-led projects: Producing Liveness in Interesting Times, OPEN DOORS: The Real Cost of Artist Led Spaces with East Street Arts and 2 Environmental Responsibility resources with Arts Council England. Special shout out to Sarah Ferrari who did the gorgeous design for all of them.

As of today, we’ve fundraised £719,128 for 32 individuals and 2 organisations. We also created ANOTHER set of free-to-access ACE templates in our bid to make the v inaccessible process hopefully a little less dreadful.

We worked with 71 individuals, independent companies and organisations through advisories, mentoring and consultancy, where we spent time discussing everything from the wildest ambitious artistic ideas, right through to comparing producer burnout stories whilst sunning our feet in an outdoor pool.

We were really pleased to have been invited to facilitate workshops with students and freelancers at ArtsDepot, Axis, Birmingham Dance Network, Chisenhale Dance Space, Creative Newhaven, Rose Bruford College, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of Salford. No surprises, but the most requested topic by far for the year was fundraising.

And cos we loved sharing this so much last year, here's one for the low pay fans again - in 2023 we worked 453 unpaid hours - and they're just the ones we remembered to log. 
That's nearly 5 and a half days a month. 
A week and a bit a month, gratis.

Alongside all this, Ash somehow managed to pop out a little bundle of joy and Laura is looking forward to welcoming their new co-worker to the virtual office in 2024.

Sending love and thanks to everyone we’ve worked with this year - see you on the other side.

Super pleased to have produced Amy Pennington's new work, TOPS - and now the screening dates have been announced so you can see it too!

2023
28 November: Homotopia/FACT Liverpool
30 November: Islington Mill, Salford/Manchester 
7 December: Studio Voltaire, London

Self-proclaimed future award winning documentary filmmaker Amy Pennington presents their landmark documentary series TOPS. On the question that defines trans masc experience in the UK today...

“What TOP did you wanna wear after TOP surgery?”

In this profound and intimate film, Amy meets four unique individuals: a powerlifter and gay-games Olympian hopeful, a housing-officer-slash-actor, an Essex filmmaker, and an equality diversity and inclusion-specialist-and-occasional-model. Amy's curiosity illuminates their experiences, through extraordinary unlimited access into their lives, homes, and bags of dicks. Insightful and invasive, TOPS allows audiences to fully understand the question on everyone's lips.

TOPS is a genre-busting documentary (with fictional elements) inspired by the chaotic, brash, self-deprecating and clueless style of 1990s/2000s British TV. Presented by an ever-so-slightly desperate and lonely version of the artist Amy Pennington, who is willing to steal footwear and camp out in the gardens of interviewees for ultimate unencumbered access and the potential of their first-ever trans friend. TOPS wants to give space to the experience of top surgery, and those that have it, without being another sad or gory story. Your nipples might fall off - but you can still have a lol.

IT'S GREEN!
IT'S FREE!
IT WON'T CHOKE A SWAN!

Arts Council England asked us to create a resource to aid thinking about Environmental Responsibility...here ya go:

We’re thrilled to announce the release of the OPEN DOORS: The Real Cost of Artist-Led Spaces report. The report collates the data from our 2021 survey which explored barriers to sustainability in artist-led spaces. 

Created in collaboration with East Street Arts and the Guild programme, and presented as part of the Hive conference, you can now download the report for free from East Street Arts' website now.

Accessibility: audio recordings of report available.

​As part of our work as Strategic Producers for Marikiscrycrycry on their new show GONER, we are pleased to offer 2 mentoring bursaries to early career producers working in/with a significant interest in experimental dance and live art. 

There is a chronic lack of producers working in the sector, but particularly in these forms. We hope to be able to support 2 people to develop their practice through offering our time as a sound board, advice, skill-sharing and resources.

The Offer
-Mentoring from Ash and Laura at The Uncultured across 4 x 1 hour sessions, plus any in-between quick fire questions
-Creating a plan across the sessions to reach a goal, or learn about a specific area of producing
-Bursary of £350 to cover your time

Who
1. You must be a producer with at least one year of experience, and you should define yourself as Early Career. 

2. You can be based anywhere in England. Mentoring sessions will be held over zoom between March - May 2023 at times mutually agreed.

3. You will be working in experimental dance or live art already, or have a significant interest in working in this area in your future practice. 

4. Marikiscrycrycry and The Uncultured want to ensure this opportunity is accessible to Black producers who are currently underrepresented in this area of the sector. Therefore, one of these bursaries is held for a Black producer. On the short application form, you will be asked to self-identify if this applies to you.

5. If you don’t know who we are, please take a look at our website the-uncultured.com and check that you’d want to spend time with us!

How to apply
Please fill in this very short Google form to apply, so we can double check you meet the above application criteria. You will be asked to share a link to your website, to your CV or list some of the artists/projects you have worked on.

If you don’t already work in experimental dance or live art, you will be asked to include a short paragraph on why you want to move into this area and name a few artists whose work you are interested in.

Applicants who meet the above criteria will have a number assigned to their application which will be put into a number generator and randomly selected. Because of this random selection process we will be unable to offer feedback. 

When
Deadline for applications is 20th February 2023 at 5pm. Late submissions will not be entered. 

​2022 was less covid-y than the last few years we can remember but it was still pretty shit, so nothing really changes, which is reassuring at least. 

This year Laura moved to Toronto so has begrudgingly become a morning person in order to continue working with Ash, who has begrudgingly become an afternoon person in order to continue working with Laura. The long-distance work-wifery endures. 

In 2022 we worked with this bloody lovely bunch of people...in alphabetical order: Amy Pennington, Arts Council England, Brian Lobel, David Shearing, East Street Arts, Malik Nashad Sharpe and Xavier de Sousa.

We fundraised £464,843.00 for 28 individuals. We worked with 51 individuals and organisations through advisories, mentoring and consultancy.

We were really pleased to have been invited to teach and facilitate workshops with students and freelancers at Axis, People Dancing, Rose Bruford College, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, Shoot Festival, Somerset House, Two Queens and University of East London. 

Here's one for the low pay fans - in 2022 we worked 462 unpaid hours - and they're just the ones we remembered to log. 
That's about 38.5 hours, or 5 and a half days a month. 
A week and a bit a month, gratis.

On that note, we hope that all the freelancers out there can afford to take a break over winter and that 2023 is a bit less Tory.

Ash + Laura xx

​Very hard to think of a catchy name for this one but we've created a free download resource that we hope will be helpful to anyone who is interested in understanding which National Portfolio Organisations (NPOs) and Investment Principle Support Organisations (IPSOs) are in those strategic funding locations that we are all being encouraged to contact.

It's an Excel workbook containing the 2023-26 Arts Council England NPO + IPSO organisations, compiled by ACE area, Priority Place and Levelling Up.


HOW TO USE: To download for yourself so you can edit, re-filter, add notes, go to File > Make a Copy and save it somewhere useful.

Happy researching!

​Like the losers we are, we've made a financial planner for you to celebrate the New Financial Year! 🎆

It's based on the one we use to ensure that we can make enough money in a year to cover what it costs us to be in business (our overheads) and cover what it costs us to live (our "wage").

We would recommend opening it in Google Sheets then clicking File > Make a copy, in order to save it for yourselves so that you can edit it and use the full functionality. This includes percentages that will auto-calculate and figures that will auto-populate as you add things. 

​HOW TO USE IT:​
There are 2 tabs at the bottom of the workbook. The first is an annotated EXAMPLE, and the second is a BLANK VERSION for you to use. 

The first thing you'll see are the Target Annual Costs. You need to make these your own, and you can add lines for each of your overheads as required. 

Then, the Income box starts with a Description line. This is for your to describe different strands of your practice broken down into projects, clients or types.

Next there is a Target Income column. This is the target you are aiming to reach for each different category of income. We work this out based on the capacity we think we have for each different type.
>>For example, you might think "I charge £300 for a consultancy session on the use of K-pop in live art, and I reckon I will do about 5 sessions of that this year" Therefore 5x£300 = £1500 target income for this line.

​But, whatever you put here, it's a goal, and will be flexible - fill it in as you need and explore it for yourself. It should be a living document that you change throughout the year as more information becomes available to you. It can also help you see what areas you need to chase for more work.

Next is a Confirmed Income column, which we fill in when a job becomes confirmed or we receive a contract. The % Complete column next to this will auto-fill cleverly to tell you how much of your target income against that line has been found. As you add to it you can see the totals adding up across the year.

At the bottom the Still to Find box shows you how far under covering all your costs you are, based on the Confirmed Income you have. While it's a minus you still have jobs and money to find and confirm. If it's a positive number, then you can add more to some of your Target Annual Costs, such as your Target wage, you lucky little sausage!

We're doing more and more advisories/consultancies on how freelancers can think more strategically to make projections for the period or year ahead so they feel some sense of control and stability. This Financial Planner can be a useful tool for plotting out what you need, where in your career it is coming from and where the shortfalls are.

Let us know if you find it helpful!

[Length: 2 mins]

TLDR, direct link to templates here

We didn't plan to make a new ACE Under £30k template because we thought ACE had made one that was fit for purpose...but then we used it and realised it wasn't.

So we've now got a whole page dedicated to ACE templates in our resources section. This includes a DYCP template, a DYCP report template and an Under £30k NLPG template, plus the old under £15k report for while it might still be useful. 

The Under £30k template links to a folder in which there is a full template, and also a workbook for all the numerical data needed in the application. It's a whopper at 28 pages before you've even input any information, so there is also a folder with bite size chunks of the application in it in case this makes it easier to navigate.

In the template we would recommend opening it in google docs then clicking File > Make a copy, in order to save it for yourselves so that you can edit it and use the full functionality. This includes an outline on the left hand side of the document if you click on Show Document Outline which makes it easier to navigate the document. 

We really hope this is useful and is more accessible than the one that ACE have released. Our previous Under/Over £15k templates were downloaded thousands of times and we had a lot of requests from folks to make a new one. It's taken hours of unpaid time* to make, but that doesn't mean it's perfect or that it makes the inaccessible process any easier.

Please do share this with anyone that might find it useful. 
Please do tell us if it actually is useful.
And if you fancy, please do tell ACE how useful you think it is. 

Please tag us @_TheUncultured_ if you share on socials.

*UPDATE: On sharing this template publicly, we were kindly offered money from some NPOs to cover the time it took us to make this resource. Big thanks to Derby Theatre (shout out to Sarah for offering in public first), Theatre Bristol, Cambridge Junction and Prime Theatre for their contributions.