Mix and match

Looking at the year-on-year mammoth success – and variety of cultural choice – on offer in Edinburgh every August (p1), it’s easy believe the hype and claim the UK is the world’s most innovative place to kickstart a career as an artist. With our festivals, multiplying like cultural gremlins; the recent box office boom for our theatres; and even art galleries entering the top ten list of most popular British attractions – it’s clear we’re not alone. Work at Perm 36 (p11), where the Opera Gulag project staged an immersive opera some time before Punchdrunk made the leap, is just one obvious reminder of how quickly good ideas can take seed, spread and spawn a dozen more. Subverting the use of this one-time Russian gulag to turn it into a cultural destination is an inspiring idea. If nothing else, being able to hunt out, stumble upon and create our own individual experiences with interactive interdisciplinary work, remains the legacy of the last decade in arts. Wilfully blurring and scribbling over the lines between theatre and visual art, dance and opera, digital and music, is very much a twenty-first century occupation – just take a look at the work put on under the banner of theatre, for instance, by events like Edinburgh’s Forest Fringe (AP222), companies like Action Hero, venues like Contact in Manchester.
It’s fitting then, that this cross-fertilisation, collaboration – whatever you want to call it – features on Arts Council England’s (ACE) outlined strategy for the next ten years. ‘Creative Partnerships’ might sound a touch joyless, but findings from the consultation paper ‘Achieving Great Art For Everyone’ show there is room for fluidity when it comes to ACE thinking about work that doesn’t fall into rigid parameters of one artform or another. In any case, the sector’s thorough response to the paper is a boon to ACE’s strategy team; we hope the conclusions prove as fruitful for all come October.