Susan Benn, PAL’S Founder Artistic Director writes…
All of us at PAL hope that this New Year brings you, your family, our friends and colleagues the very best of health, enough time, space and resources for what you most want to do and much love and friendship.
PAL’s Achievements in 2011 pave the way for bold plans in 2012 and beyond. Here are a few of our 2011 milestones which you will read more about, along with the new opportunities to take part in PAL’s work, which will appear on out site in the coming months.
• Gill Clarke MBE, Pioneering dancer, educator, movement specialist and co-founder of Dance UK and Independent Dance, began a new kind of experiential PAL Movement and Meaning Lab process with PAL in February 2011. Gill Worked, right up until the day before she died on November 15th and after a long battle with cancer, to establish a legacy for her research. We deeply feel her loss and in 2012 PAL, led by our chair, Roanne Dods will be working together with Independent Dance, Siobhan Davies Dance and a growing number of Movement and Meaning Lab participants from a wide range of disciplines beyond the dance world to take this research forward.
• In 2011 we launched If Not You Who Else?, PAL’S first non-residential Lab for and with young people. This represents a point of departure in which 16 young people, with the most diverse backgrounds, explored the relationship between young people, the arts and their local communities in London. In 10 days over four months, including the time of the riots in Britain, the group worked with 6sizx established artists and to Lab Directors to create three new group led youth projects which contribute to greater public participation and community cohesion. Members of the group have formed strong bonds and they continue to support each other in person and through social media.
• As a result of this experience, PAL has made a longer-term commitment to a new strand of work with young artists, issuing an invitation to recent Lab participants to be part of PAL’s Board with direct involvement in the development of future programmes with and for young people. In September PAL received a generous grant from the Comino Foundation to further develop this work in partnership with young people from London and their RSA Academy in Tipton. We look forward to making youth voices much more prominent and active in the future of our organisation.
• For most small arts organisations in Britain, 2011 brought about financial challenges. Our response is both frugal and bold. PAL Trustee, Rehana Mughal, a talented Cultural Partnerships Producer, is now working with me and our new Administrator, Peter Combes, to design, manage and implement a set of new programmes and create a team of PAL Associates who will support our future work. We are setting up a new commercial arm called PAL+ to offer more people in the UK and abroad the PAL experience and to bring additional income into our long established charitable enterprise. Supported by a strong board and exceptional talent pool accrued over 22 years across the UK and overseas, our imagination, as ever, drives us forward.
Over the coming months there will be more opportunities for you to engage in out work through Art of Enquiry conversations, symposia, and new Lab programmes so please follow us on Twitter to hear about what’s happening and ways to get involved.
As Geoff Mulgan says in his recent blog for NESTA: “watch out for a new generation of frugal innovators, frugal laboratories and frugal innovation programmes trying to maximise creative impact for the minimum expense.”