PALAVER! is a pioneering new development programme supporting the creation of new queer-positive performance work for children and family audiences taking place at Cambridge Junction throughout September & October 2021.
PALAVER! will create a disruptive, messy, joyful, and celebratory season of inclusive performance programming for children aged 3-8 and family audiences, supporting the development of high quality performance that provides essential representation, space, and dialogue celebrating queer identities for children and families.
As the first programme of its kind in the world PALAVER! will bring together three strands of activity:
- ARTISTS: delivering a series of three facilitated artist-development labs at Cambridge exploring the radical potential of queer work for young audiences through up-skilling and empowering 5 of the UK’s leading queer artists to start developing new performance work. The six incredible artists are:
read more about the PALAVER artists here.
Labs include producer support, production and development resources, and test performance opportunities. Each lab will be followed by additional development time, culminating in the creation of 5 performance extracts ready for development into full-scale productions.
- AUDIENCES: offering a public programme of queer postive children & family performance work at Cambridge Junction, building an audience development model for queer-positive family programming.
Audiences can join us at three Sunday morning PALAVER PARTIES, bringing together disco, drag, dress-up, games, and scratch performances of work created on development labs suitable for children aged 3-8 (and their grown-ups too) on 12th September, 3rd and 17th October.
The project will culminate in the PALAVER FESTIVAL on Thursday 28th October (during half-term), a day long celebration of inclusive programming celebrating the potential of queer positive performance work for children and family audiences – including a showcase of the six new performance works developed over the project. - SECTOR: advancing what it means to make intersectional queer-positive performance work for children and what it means for arts organisations to make meaningful space for queer families.
On Weds 27th October we invite producers, programmers, artists directors, venue managers, artists and independent creatives to join us for the PALAVER Symposium – a day long event of interactive workshops, panel discussions, LGBTQ+ awareness training, and open conversations on artist development, emotional labour, marketing, and venue accessibility.
Tickets for all events are on sale now from www.junction.co.uk/, a limited number of symposium and festival bursary places are available to independent artists and producers, please contact hello@fattprojects.org for further information.
PALAVER is conceived and delivered by midlands based queer company Fatt Projects’s (lead by Artistic Director Adam Carver), PALAVER is supported by Cambridge Junction through their Vision Mixer’s programme, Marlborough Productions, and Arts Council, England.
Adam Carver 