Staging Places
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Staging Places: UK Design for Performance 2015-2019

We build the content. We tell the stories that sell the tickets. We make the memories. We are the storytellers now…

Staging Places celebrates the diversity of performance design and making practices today, to inspire young people to invent it for the future and to acknowledge its impact on a wider sense of place and community.

The Society of British Theatre Designers (SBTD) supports and celebrates the work of performance designers based in the UK.

Staging Places will celebrate what we make and who we make it with in towns, cities, villages, rural and remote communities here in the UK and around the world.

Staging Places aims to celebrate the diversity of performance design and making practices today and to inspire young people to invent it for the future…

U.K. Performance Designers are 21st century polymaths with a global reach.

We invent imaginary worlds and extraordinary environments in the staging places we call theatres and in the ones we don’t.

We animate cities, we fill theatres, arts centres and opera houses, we bring museums to life, we transform heritage sites and urban spaces

and we enliven globally broadcast stadium pop concerts and sporting events. In a diverse, multi-cultural visual age, we are the storytellers now. We are, of course, collaborators too.

Without the producers, the directors, the choreographers, the makers, the performers and the audience the alchemy of live performance just can’t happen but performance designers don’t just work in these staging places now.

Our work exists on your blog, your Twitter feed, your Instagram, your Facebook, your Tumblr, your Flickr, your You Tube channel, your livestream, in your augmented and your virtual realities.

The borders of where our work appears are porous and the hierarchies of our sector are dissolving.

THIS WAS OUR OPEN CALL:

The Society Of British Theatre Designers (SBTD) exists to support and celebrate the work of performance designers based in the UK at every stage in their career. We have a four-yearly cycle of exhibitions, publications and a wide ranging education programme which in turn synchronise with and contribute to the Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space and World Stage Design, international exhibitions of scenography and theatre architecture. We continually liaise with our colleagues at Stage Directors UK, the Association of Sound Designers and the Association of Lighting Designers to advocate for the best working terms and conditions for our members. Promoting strong links with the education and training of the next generation of performance designers is a key part of our remit and this is made possible by ongoing dialogues with academic organisations such as the Performance Design Education Collective (PDEC)

We are a UK centre for OISTAT (International Organisation of Scenographers, Theatre Architects and Technicians) making us part of an active worldwide network of practitioners.


Curatorial Team

Curator : Fiona Watt
Associate Curator : Andreas Skourtis
Associate Curator: David Shearing
Designer: Andreas Skourtis
Production Support & Sponsorship : Nicky Shaw
Graphic Design: Marc Jennings
Project Team: Rosie Whiting
Project Team / Videographer: Chuck Lowry
Project Team: Patti Amat
Website Design: Mark Martin / Guy Bannister (Rabbit Hole)
Website Content: David Shearing
Project Team / Graphics: Elizabeth Wright
Proof Readers: Martin and Ros Morley


Exhibition Credits

Production Manager: Marco Savo
AV Designer: Eva Auster
Lighting Designer: Robbie Butler
Education Programme co-ordinator (V&A): Ian Teague
Technical Manager (PQ and V&A): Ian Evans
Exhibition Support (V&A): Peter Farley
Exhibition Build Manager (V&A): Sean Crowley
Live Talks Curation (PQ): Kathy Sandys
Live Talks Curation (PQ): Lucy Thornett


The Society of British Theatre Designers

Fiona Watt: Honorary Secretary
Sean Crowley: Director
Peter Farley: Director
Greer Crawley: Director
Peter Ruthven Hall: Treasurer
Kay Denyer: Administrator