Third Angel Mentoring Scheme 2016

We are very pleased to announce that the Third Angel Mentoring Scheme 2016 is now open for applications.

Are you an artist, theatre maker or company making contemporary theatre, solo performance, live art or some combination of all three? Are you a writer, deviser, director and/or performer?

Can we help you make a show?

Apply for funding?

Plan a new project?

Get off the treadmill and think for a bit?

Understand how tour-booking works?

Play in a rehearsal room for a week learning new techniques?

Something we haven’t thought of?

We have five funded weeks of mentoring to offer. The focus for this may be artistic and dramaturgical or developing business skills, career advice or practical advice on touring work or application writing. Each mentoring programme is bespoke and will respond to the particular needs of the artist/company, and the specifics of the project.  It’s aim is to facilitate artistic development through sharing skills, knowledge and offering advice.

For over 12 years Third Angel has provided training and mentoring for young and established artists and companies, drawing on over 20 years of making and touring theatre across the UK and internationally. This has consistently been one of the most rewarding areas of our work. We have been lucky enough to support artists and companies including Action Hero, Faye Draper, Hannah Nicklin, RashDash, Daniel Bye, Claire Hind, The Other Way Works and Unfolding Theatre, to name but a few.

What’s On Offer?

Each of the five Mentoring Weeks includes:

• Five days of support from one or a combination of Third Angel Artistic Directors Alexander Kelly and Rachael Walton, and General Manager Hilary Foster.
• A fee of £450 (including travel expenses).
• A week’s rehearsal & mentoring space at Sheffield Theatres (if appropriate - the available dates are included in the application form below).

At least one of the weeks will be awarded to an artist/company from a Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic background.

At least one of the weeks will be awarded to an artist who identifies as disabled.

At least one week will be awarded to an artist/company aged 16 – 21.

At least one week will be awarded to an artist on a low income.

What To Do Next

If you need any more information or support, call us on 0114 201 3856.

Download and complete the Application and Equal Opportunities Forms (click here).

Closing date for applications is 10.00am Monday 23^rd May 2016.

All applicants will be notified of the result of their application.

“Without Third Angel's hugely generous and thoughtful mentoring support Action Hero would not exist. At many key points in our formation and development as a collaboration their brilliantly incisive advice has played a crucial role in the decisions we've made. Their continuing support is one of our most valued professional relationships.” Action Hero 

Third Angel’s Mentoring Scheme has been made possible with funding from Arts Council England. The scheme will run again in 2017.

The Cost of Training

We learn from doing, from making work. From a desire to make something new, something the audience has not seen or experienced before, something none of us would have made on our own. We challenge ourselves, to have to learn new things about making work each time – about making that particular piece of work. Setting ourselves new problems to solve. And as one project nears fruition there will always be two or three more developing – sometimes born out of the current project, often a response to, or a reaction against, it. Let's do something different this time. Sometimes we will want to develop an idea, continue down a path of exploration. But usually there will be a project coming up where the unspoken intention is to not be able to use the lessons learned so far. To get ourselves in to new trouble.

I've got a short piece in the latest edition of the Journal of Dance and Performance Training. It's a response to the question "What is the Cost of Training?" My bit is in there with some really interesting responses from Dick McCaw, Charlotte Vincent, Jodean Sumner, Konstantinos Thomaides, Marie-Gabrielle Rotie and Peter Petralia.

You can download it here, but given that it is quite expensive for an individual, it's worth checking if your library already subscribes to the print or online edition. And if they don't you, can click the recommend button and see if they'll subscribe for you.

So you'd like a placement? Please do your homework.

Hello, this is Hilary, General Manager, dropping in to get a few things off my chest pass on some tips about maximising your chances of getting help, information or a placement out of us.

It's dissertation season, which always triggers a little rush of emails from students asking us for information, and some after work experience. We do our best to help students as much as possible, but we're a tiny, overworked company and despite our best intentions just can't meet everyone's requests by return. So, I thought I'd put together a 'how to get our attention' guide to asking us for something. In a spirit of friendly helpfulness, you understand, rather than a moan. Mostly.

1. Re: [blank]
No subject line and from an address my computer doesn't recognise? Chances are it'll go to my junk folder and never see the light of day. Game over. Go on, stick 'dissertation question' or 'Do you have any placement opportunities?' in there. Doesn't take a second.

2. Dear Sir/Madam/to whom it may concern
If you're genuinely keen to work with us or get that killer quote for your essay, you need to show us that. Addressing an email as if it's a circular from a stationery company just makes me sigh and delete. A quick rummage around our website will reveal the names of company members, so if you don't use a name it just looks lazy, and frankly a bit rude.

3. Here's my dissertation title. Please could you write it for me?
OK, that's probably a bit unfair, but only a bit. Very big or very general questions ("how do you make your work/how do you run a company?") that need 6000 words or more to answer will be filed in the 'to do' folder, and may never be seen again. When we're up to our eyes in tour booking or funding applications or in the rehearsal room (as we nearly always are) this is what we are able to respond to: succinct, focused questions that go beyond what's already available on our FAQ page (go to About and scroll right), an idea of context, and a ballpark deadline by which you need us to reply. Then if we can't help we can at least let you know in a timely fashion. Or help another way, with a 10 minute phone interview for instance.

4. I'll do anything
If it's work experience or a professional placement you're after, we need to know exactly what you're hoping for. We've all done placements or worked for free, and we know how depressing it can be when it doesn't live up to expectations, so you need to be just as clear about what you need to gain from your time with us, so we can be clear about what we can or can't help with. It's no good saying "I'll be happy to just sweep the stage", because a) I won't believe you and b) no stage needs that much sweeping. Yes, of course a willingness to do the small rubbish jobs is an admirable (essential?) quality - we do them ourselves every day - but tell us what you really want. Do you want to sit in on rehearsals? Learn how to market a show? See life on the road? This is important stuff, because we do have 'fallow' periods when there's nothing much to see at Third Angel HQ except a couple of us typing. And I'm guessing that's not what most people have in mind when they imagine a placement at a performance company.

5. I'm great in Panto
What's the last show you saw that left a big impression? What are you reading that excites you? If you've seen our work, tell us what you thought. If you haven't, tell us what has drawn you to us. If you have a CV full of workshops with contemporary artists and site-specific shows then that clearly demonstrates your interest in our kind of work. If your CV is more panto and Shakespeare, you'll need to tell us more about why you've approached us (rather than the RSC), otherwise it looks like you've just fired off an email to everyone under 'theatre' on yell.com.

6. And finally
The little things count. If there are five people after a placement, the one who has sent a well-written, enthusiastic email that's been proofread, spell-checked and shows they've done their homework on the company, automatically goes to the top of my 'reply to' list. If five people are trying to get information to feed into an essay at the same time, the one who demonstrates some knowledge of our work, and passion for their subject, will be up there too.

All of which is a very long way of saying "do your research and check your grammar". But it works. Really. And demonstrating initiative goes even further. Consider the gauntlet thrown...

First person to spot a typo gets a pack of Pills for Modern Living postcards.

Performance Education

Earlier this week I was lucky enough to be at a Valedictory Lecture at Leeds Met University by Professor Noel Witts.  Noel has been instrumental in setting up the Performing Arts provision, which is led by Teresa Brayshaw, at Leeds Met - but that's only the most recent in a very long list of achievements. To explain Professor Witt's importance to the world of contemporary performance education would take a much longer blogpost - or in fact, a book.

I first met Noel when we were both on the selection panel for the New Works Festival in Leicester in the late 1990s. What impressed me then, and still does, is that despite (or, in fact, because of) his extensive experience, what he's most interested in is what you think - what you've seen recently, what you thought of it, what you're making, why you're making it. It was entirely typical that in his own Valedictory Lecture, he gave about half of his floor time over to showcasing performance by his colleagues and students at Leeds Met - from first year undergraduate to Principal Lecturer.

I am lucky enough to benefit from Noel's experience at both Third Angel, where he is on our Board, and at Leeds Met where I am an Associate (very part time) Senior Lecturer. Noel's lecture was in part a riposte to Simon Jenkins' attack on Universities in The Guardian last year, and in preparation for the lecture he asked some of us to share a few thoughts on the importance of Performing Arts being present in Higher Education.

I was flattered that he included my brief response (alongside that of Oliver Bray and Teresa Brayshaw) verbatim. And as this week I also started making a new piece with second year Art Event Performance students at Leeds Met, it feels appropriate to post them here.

It's important that the performing arts are in Higher Education, the way we deliver them [at Leeds Met] anyway, because the provision is better than being professional. At least better than starting out on your own. In a three year BA degree you get to make, what, 18 shows/projects, with over 30 different collaborators, and taught/directed/led/mentored by 10, 12 different practitioners and artists.

You wouldn't get that environment if you just became a self employed artist 'straight from school'. In fact, you wouldn't get such an environment until much later in your career, if you were lucky. So the environment we provide is actually better than the profession in some ways - better than vocational.

And an educational institution, particularly a University, should reflect the society it is part of, and, surely, try to be better than it. And where does a society do much of its thinking, discussing, dreaming? How does it try to understand itself? Through its culture. So a University should be home to those voices.

There is, of course, a much bigger discussion to be had about this, but for now, I just wanted to mark Noel's Valedictory lecture - and say: Thank you, Professor.