What is Home? Finding Belonging in Uncertain Times
This week, the update on our quest takes for the form of an invitation to you come to an Open Space event on the theme of HOME, which we are holding on Saturday 6 November. Read on below for the full invite and book your free tickets. Also, in case you missed it, here is a short film of some thoughts we shared, when we gathered over the summer, about our search: https://www.improbable.co.uk/posts/a-short-video-by-mika-rosenfeld
Photo by Phelim McDermott. Paper house by Riddley McDermott.
An invitation to an Open Space event from Phelim McDermott, Lee Simpson and Matilda Leyser:
Improbable are looking for a thing we have never had - a home - and in the process we want to invite in and hold space for a wider conversation about the nature of 'home' within our sector and beyond. It seems a pressing and critical search at a time when so much in our world is unstable, when so many are in need of refuge.
'The Gathering' is the name we have given to our search. You can read our original post about this here. We called it The Gathering because, to date, the practice of gathering has been our home, our way of offering shelter. For the last twenty five years our home has been the temporary structures we have created in our rehearsal rooms and within our Devoted and Disgruntled Open Space events, during which we gather in a circle. It seems only right, therefore, that we hold an Open Space as part of our quest for a more permanent structure. We want to invite artists, producers, directors, audience members - you! - to engage with us and with each other about the idea of home. We want to help create a supportive network between the different kinds of homes which are emerging at the moment, since we know we are not alone in dreaming of a place to settle, to hold and be held. Our search is revealing that the question is as much about 'who?' as 'where?' Who are the people with whom we need to connect? If the question of 'home' speaks to you, then you are one of them.
So, what is a creative home, for you? Do you have one? A studio, a workshop, a barn, a great big venue, or a poky little back room in someone else's place? Or do you feel homeless? And do you like having no fixed abode, being light-footed, itinerant? Or do you long for a place to belong? Recently, as part of our Gathering process, we shared a post by actor Richard Katz, about the often opposing experiences of those with buildings and those without - where do you sit within this uneasy polarity?
And do you have a vision of your ideal home? Of one you would love to find, or create? Or of how you would like to reinvent the one you have? How does this so-called professional home, relate to your personal one? Are they the same? Or separate? And what makes you feel at home? The food, or the furniture? The people, or the practice? The landscape around, or the hearth inside? Or some ineffable mixture of them all? We are asking these questions of ourselves and we would love to ask them of you, with you, and to give you the space to ask some other questions, and to play with some different answers.
You can attend this event - guess what? - from the comfort of your own home! We will gather online in a virtual circle, to enable people to participate from across the UK and the world, to make connections between many homes, open some up, and maybe, together, create some new ones.
We look forward to seeing you there.
Phelim, Lee and Matilda