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Participatory Arts London

Reflecting on our practice; pursuing peer-to-peer learning

Half Moon are a founding member of the Participatory Arts London (PAL) Network and we are part of the Steering Committee.

PAL is a collective voice for people who design, produce and facilitate participatory arts in London.

You can also follow PAL on Twitter: @PALLondon

Our Mission

Representing ourselves, reflecting on our practice and safeguarding the diversity of London’s cultural offer

In December 2011, representatives from 13 of London’s participatory arts organisations, including five Arts Council England NPOs, met to discuss the challenges we face as arts educationalists in a fast-moving social and economic environment. Our network now includes more than 400 representatives from over 250 organisations as well as freelance practitioners and producers.

PAL was formed to give a collective voice to people who design, produce and facilitate participatory arts in London. We continue to be concerned about the lack of representation in our sector and pursue wider conversations with creative practitioners and strategic and cultural organisations. We use our strength as a group to reflect on our own practice and pursue peer-to-peer learning and professional development, using our findings for discussions about value, impact and quality and long-term discussions with the wider sector.

We invite anyone working in Participatory Arts to join our conversation.

Our focus is participatory arts with young people. We are currently focused in the main on theatre and performing arts but are slowly developing relationships with other art forms and inviting representatives to join our network.

Following the learning of the pandemic we will now move to a model where we meet in person once a term for a two-and-a-half-hour meeting hosted by different venues across London.

We also visit each other’s work to learn from each other, reflect on our own practice and build new partnerships across the sector and art forms.

Network and Meetings

We use our PAL Organisations’ Network mailing list for insight, collaboration and support. Then we meet for the same reasons.

We hold one in-person meeting every term (February, June and October). Details about the June meeting will be here soon.

To attend the next Organisations’ Network meeting in June (in person), for more information about PAL and to join the network mailing list please contact (this is the best list to join if you work for an organisation): participatoryartslondon@gmail.com or even better, use the sign-up form below.

Please note that we are limiting the mailing list sign-up to one email per organisation to ensure we can keep the mailing list an open ‘reply all’ offer.

 

* Please bear in mind that members of PAL volunteer their time to maintain the Networks so only check the inbox once a week to sign new people up. 

Freelancers’ Network

We also coordinate a PAL Freelancers’ Network. This is a mailing list to receive information from PAL organisations about freelance opportunities. Wherever possible, we offer two marketplace events a year to enable freelancers to meet organisations for whom they might want to work.

The last in-person Freelancers’ Marketplace was hosted by St Margaret’s House (venue: The Tramshed, Digby Street, E2 0LS) on Friday 15 September 2023 from 10am-1pm.

To join the Freelancers’ Network, please contact (this is the best list to join if you are a freelancer working for a number of organisations – no need to send a CV just email asking to sign up)palfreelancers@gmail.com (but the best thing to do is use the sign-up form below).

 

* Please bear in mind that members of PAL volunteer their time to maintain the Networks so only check the inbox once a week to sign new people up. 

PAL is coordinated by Matthew Lyons from Chickenshed (Organisations) and Beccy Allen from St Margaret’s House (Freelancers). They are supported by a Steering Committee which includes representatives from the following organisations:

Arcola Theatre; ATG; Brixton House; Go Live Theatre Projects; Hackney Empire; Half Moon Theatre; Kiln Theatre; Ministry of Stories; Old Vic Theatre; Punchdrunk Enrichment; Rich Mix; Speech Bubbles CIO and Unicorn Theatre.

For the 2023/24 academic year, the Autumn Term meeting was coordinated by Old Vic, the Spring Term 2024 meeting by Kiln Theatre and the Summer Term 2024 meeting will be coordinated by Unicorn Theatre.

Want to sign up to the PAL Network? Get in touch!

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