Inspired and Delighted

August 06, 2010

Now an essential part of PAL’s R&D process, our recent Art of Enquiry Lab was a welcome counterpoint to the prevailing bleak view of the future of arts. As theatre practitioner Ola Animashawun remarked, “Here’s to the power of thought, action, vision, listening, feeling and moving together as one. United, inspired and delighted”: a neat summing up of the principles that underpin PAL’s work.

July 29th saw ten artists and arts practitioners joining us here at our home in the Siobhan Davies Studios for our second Art of Enquiry Lab. These days are designed to support PAL’s programme development by inviting artists and others to share and explore the ideas and challenges which are most engaging them at present.  We held our first in June 2009, celebrating our 20th anniversary.

This latest Lab was specifically for the artists we are currently working with to develop new Labs and Lab programmes. We used the day to learn more about each other’s Lab ideas, to uncover connections and swap persuasive arguments about the value of the risky R&D process that is a PAL Lab.

“How energising it was to feel the accumulating sense of commonality in underlying values as we went through introducing our various propositions. For all the diversity of the specificity of the projects, it felt like we were mapping a territory that PAL looks out for and nurtures.”

  Gill Clarke, dance artist