Digital Farm 2020, was a new initiative for both UK and international producers, developed in response to the cancellation of this year’s Producer Farm. Its aim was to address a need from producers for support and ongoing training throughout their careers as well as space and time to consider their current and future potential.

A joint initiative from Fuel, Bristol Ferment, Coombe Farm Studios, and Dance Umbrella, Digital Farm provided 15 producers with the opportunity to share experiences with their peers and respond to provocations and conversations led by the partners as well as guest speakers. These partners, along with In Between Time, have collaborated for four successful years on Producer Farm.

Each guest speaker shared a thirty-minute reflection on themes including leadership in times of uncertainty and change, community engagement cultural democracy, and sustainability. Highlights from these talks will be made available online throughout July and August for the wider arts community to access.

Digital Farm 2020 talks will be shared as follows:

Mariko Finch (Deputy Editor of Digital Content at Sotheby’s) WATCH HERE

Margaret Wheatley (Founder and President of the Berkana institute) WATCH HERE

François Matarasso (Community artist, writer, and researcher) Available from Friday 7 August

Stella Kanu (Executive Director of LIFT) Available from Friday 14 August 

#DigitalFarm

Sound&Fury’s Charlie Ward at Home

C Ward, 1914. In a makeshift hospital, behind the front line, the war’s first casualties are treated. To boost morale, medical staff arrange for a Chaplin film to be shown for the bedridden, with the ward’s ceiling serving as the silver screen. 

For one soldier, Harry, the flickering images, whirring projector, and Chaplin’s perfect comic timing trigger complex emotions and memories. Transported from the trenches to childhood, from trauma to dreams, the experience sets him on a journey into a personal no man’s land.

During the COVID-19 crisis theatre companies have been trying to find new and safe ways to present their work.

First staged in a makeshift hospital tent with beds for an audience of ten people with immersive surround sound, Sound&Fury’s Charlie Ward has been reimagined for 2020 so it can be presented as a theatrical installation in your own home.

Charlie Ward at Home is an intimate, immersive, and powerful piece that places you as a patient at the heart of a wartime hospital, where this unusual therapy brings solace and comfort to those injured on the battlefield.

Using Sound&Fury’s distinctive style, immersive sound design, and footage from Charlie Chaplin’s By the Sea, the extraordinary experience of being on Charlie Ward is conjured for our audience.

Charlie Ward was originally co-commissioned by Fuel and 14-18 NOW – WW1 Centenary Art Commissions, supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England and the Heritage Lottery Fund. It was first presented at the Cinema Museum, London in July 2014 as part of the 14-18 NOW cultural programme of extraordinary art experiences that took place across the UK to mark the centenary of the First World War.

How to access and experience the piece

Once you have booked a ticket, you will receive an email with a link to the piece and a reminder of our recommendations for experiencing the installation at home:

• Watch the piece lying in a quiet room, made as dark as possible.
• If you can, listen using headphones.
• If you are able to connect your device to a projector then set it up so the film can be projected onto the ceiling above you. If not, simply lie comfortably wherever you can see your screen.
• If you are watching the film on a laptop, set the picture to full-screen mode if possible.

Charlie Ward at Home lasts just under 20 minutes and is available online for you to access until Monday 20 July 2020.

Age recommendation: 12+

The installation is available with or without Open Captions.

Ticket Pricing

Donate What You Can

#CharlieWardatHome

DeadClub™ is open to those who are not dead yet. The recently dead need not apply.

Between two heartbeats, the light creeps closer and closer to your number. It won’t be everyone, but it might be you. Now there is only the present moment. Everything unfolds second by second and it’s loud and hot and the body works as if by magic. Now the real trouble begins.

Commissioned by The Place, and co-produced alongside Fuel in 2017, DeadClub™ was an up-close experience for a limited audience. The Place and Fuel brought an archive recording of DeadClub™ to your homes via The Place website from Thursday 18th June to Monday 22nd June.

We even had a chat with writer Maddy Costa after the performance via zoom. This was a space for audiences to share their thoughts and hear what others made of the show.

Age recommendation: 16+

Co-directed by Frauke Requardt and David Rosenberg, creators of Electric Hotel, Motor Show, and The Roof, DeadClub™ was a shift from their previous spectacular outdoor collaborations.

DeadClub™ was commissioned by The Place and co-produced by The Place and Fuel. Supported using public funding by the Arts Council England and the Wellcome Trust. Dave Price is supported by PRS Foundation’s The Open Fund for Music Creators. Frauke Requardt is a Work Place artist.

Partners

Barber Shop Chronicles made a triumphant return, to the comfort of your own home!

Barber Shop Chronicles was an addition to #NationalTheatreAtHome, bringing theatre to your screens for free.

A National Theatre, Fuel, and Leeds Playhouse co-production, Barber Shop Chronicles by Inua Ellams tell the interwoven tales of black men from across the globe who for generations have gathered in barber shops where the banter is barbed and the truth is always telling.

This never-before-seen archive recording was from the production’s second sold-out run at the National Theatre in 2017.

Partners

Love Letters Straight From Your Heart was originally a BAC Scratch and Arnolfini We Live Here commission, also commissioned by Leeds Met Studio Theatre. Love Letters at Home has been commissioned by First Art, a Creative People and Places project, as part of its Go the Distance remote festival for audiences in Ashfield, Mansfield, Bolsover and North East Derbyshire.

About the Audience Experience

Love Letters at Home is an intimate participatory event in which audience and performers offer dedications and declarations of love, past and present. It is collaboratively written with its audience, who temporarily become a community of close friends across the performance.

Once an audience member has booked their ticket, they are invited to send in a music request with a dedication to someone they love.

Audiences will receive a reminder email the day before with a password and Zoom link to attend. The performance will last just under one hour.

Co-presented with Camden People’s Theatre and supported by Jerwood Charitable Foundation through the Home Run Commission. Funded by Arts Council England and the Leche Trust. Development supported by Ovalhouse.

Mel your body is yours, you can f**k who you want!’

Melissa is having a bit of a crisis. This bold, funny and honest hour explores the reasons why; starting with her mum, God and sex.

Told by a first generation British Ghanaian woman on the hunt for an orgasm, So Many Reasons is a one-woman show that prods the ideas of femininity and womanhood inherited by daughters. Exploring cultural and generational shifts, religion and sexuality, this brave new show asks what happens when we realise mums don’t always know best.

NOMINATION: Off West End Theatre Awards – Best Female Performance

‘Rollicking good fun, serious philosophical lowdown, and pure youthful emotion’ – London Theatre 1
‘Fresh, fun and utterly vital’ – List

Tanya Stephenson – Lighting Designer and Production Manager

Ben Grant – Sound Designer

Lanre Malaolu – Movement Director

Sarah Beaton – Associate Designer

Key Image Credit: Guy Sanders
Production Photo Credit: Dan Tsantilis