Magnetic North Blog

Magnetic North is delighted to announce the lead and collaborating artists for our next Rough Mix creative lab. Rough Mix brings together five lead artists, each with a new idea to develop, two collaborating artists, and an ensemble of six performers. Each lead artist spends time observing, assisting or collaborating on the other artists’ projects as well as working on their own project. Rough Mix 2022 is a partnership with Macrobert Arts Centre and will take place in person at Macrobert. Should this not be possible then the residency will move online.

The lead artists are Beth Dynowski, Kathy McKean, Priiya Prethora, Jennifer Paterson and Lewis Sherlock. The collaborating artists are Amy Conway and Ben Fletcher. Together they work across dance, physical theatre, aerial, music, writing, theatre, sculpture and performance.

Rough Mix will run from 17-28 January 2022. We'll be sharing a video of the work produced online - keep an eye on our social media for updates. 

‘Clap Your Hands’ by The Manhattan Transfer - a song familiar to no one involved with the project except me - was an essential part of the piece that I had written as a Scene for Survival. It didn’t matter that at over three minutes in length, to play any significant part of it would encroach significantly on the five minutes running time limit, nor that the cost of sampling it would be prohibitive. The song title was written into the play, including as part of a fantasy sequence central to the piece that also was the play: of a piece of music that once connected two people so that one might find a way to reach the other again - a moment of hope and denial simultaneously. It was essential.

This year's Rough Mix takes place at The Lemon Tree in Aberdeen, in partnership with Aberdeen Performing Arts.

The participating artists and our Artistic Director Nicholas Bone talk about their plans for the residency in this video:

Tickets for the free sharing of work in progress on Friday 15 July, 6pm, are available here. 

Rough Mix Aberdeen has been realised in partnership with Aberdeen Performing Arts and is supported by Creative Scotland, the David & June Gordon Memorial Trust and Aberdeen City Council creative funding.

Rough Mix 2020 will take place at Summerhall, Edinburgh from  20-31 January. It is being presented in partnership with manipulate and Summerhall.

There are paid opportunities for experienced artists, early-career artists, and performers to take part. It is open to artists and performers from any art form. Applicants from Scotland with experience of puppetry will also be able to apply to take part in the Scotland-Quebec Puppetry Exchange programme being run jointly by Magnetic North, Puppet Animation Scotland, and Casteliers, Montreal.

Experienced and early-career artists should download a PDF with full information, including links to the online application forms, here.

Performers should download a PDF with full information, including links to the online application forms, here.

The deadlines for applications are:

1pm (UK), 23rd September 2019 for experienced and early-career artists (including Scotland-Quebec Puppetry Exchange).

1pm (UK), 7th October 2019  for performers.

This week we're running our paid online residency for experienced artists. Space/Time is a creative retreat for artists from any art form that asks the question “How can you continue to thrive as an artist?”. Normally participants travel to a location in Scotland, but due to the pandemic, we're again running Space/Time online. The artists gathering together (remotely) are: