About Us
Quick links:
We are a London-based charitable organisation, dedicated to the development of Live Art research, practice and infrastructure.
Founded in 1999, the Live Art Development Agency (LADA) operates from East London and works locally, nationally and internationally. We are the home of the Live Art Research Collection, Live Art Bookshop, and co-ordinators of Live Art UK.
In 2024, Mary Osborn was appointed Director. Mary brings a fresh vision for LADA and for live artists and thinkers.
‘We are ready to lean into the unknown, to rise to the challenges and opportunities facing our sector, and, like the thinkers and artists we support, do things differently.’
– Mary Osborn
Vision
Our vision is an expansive Live Art ecology that prioritises learning, practices resistance, and invites possibility about what art can be and do.
Mission
As a ‘Development Agency’, we deliver our mission through three strands: developing Live Art research, practice and infrastructure.
Research
Our primary resource is the Live Art Research Collection, housed at LADA’s Study Room in Bethnal Green. Containing over 8,000 items from the 1960s to the present day, including an audio-visual archive of interdisciplinary live and performance practices, the Live Art Research Collection is the world’s largest collection of research materials on Live Art.
Alongside our online resources for artists, students and professionals, our ever-expanding collection remains the only open-access resource of its kind. Our Live Art Bookshop expands our research engine, distributing a curated selection of hard-to-find publications, media and limited editions, including artists’ books and LADA’s own titles.
The Live Art Research Collection is activated by annual artistic research residencies, workshops and our broader public programme, connecting practices of the past with those emerging in the present and future.
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LADA Study Room, July 2025. Image credit Jemima Yong
Practice
We create professional development programmes for under-represented artists and practitioners, with a focus on peer-to-peer development and shared process. Through residencies, commissions and bespoke opportunities, we support practitioners to centre collaboration and experimentation in their practice.
This includes LADA’s national peer-to-peer professional development programme DIY, which seeks to create the conditions for artists to explore ideas, aesthetics and socio-political challenges together, and build a nation-wide support network for radical practice.
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Lara Habib Kobeissi, Nazar نَظَر, June 2025. LADA and Shubbak Festival. Image credit Alexandra Rizkallah for Shubbak Festival.
Infrastructure
Our mission is to build sustainable national and international partnerships so that artists working within the multiplicities of Live Art can take risks, experiment and develop diverse audiences. This includes co-ordinating Live Art UK, a network of 28 partners who seek to sustain and develop the Live Art ecology. We also work in partnership with Higher Education institutions to share knowledge and embed Live Art within wider cultural and academic contexts.
By connecting independent artists, grassroots spaces, major institutions and higher education we are helping to shape a more sustainable, inclusive and courageous infrastructure for Live Art.
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Poppy Jackson: Tower. Credit: Bill Jackson Foto-2-2
Values
We value, create and sustain connections built on mutual trust and respect for difference.
We prioritise learning with and alongside our communities. We take time with the questions, value the process and share our discoveries.
We take responsibility for the power that we hold as an institution and collection, holding ourselves accountable for how we use and re-distribute the power to effect change.
The LADA 5 Cs
We are custodians
We collect and care for the materials that live in our research collection, so that present and future generations of artists and researchers can access them. We do this with respect for the past, not reverence. We take a critical approach to how knowledge is gathered, stored and shared, and are committed to access, transparency and critique of power.
We are curators
We listen and respond to our current and ever-evolving cultural contexts. We make decisions based on emerging ideas that we learn about through conversations with artists and researchers, and in dialogue with what we hold in our collection.
We are collaborators
We find joy in working with artists, practitioners, researchers and organisations. We think, strategise and take action together, with trust and respect for each other’s work. We are particularly interested in approaches to co-learning and collaborative research.
We are cross-disciplinary
We are a meeting point for explorations of liveness, and for practices that have been historically excluded from traditional art contexts. We are curious about what emerges when different disciplines meet and are excited by fluidity and experimentation. We welcome artists and researchers who share our desire to commune around the potential of this work, and are eager to hear what live art means to them.
We are change-makers
We do this work because we want to create change. By change we mean a more equitable and more liveable cultural, social and political reality. We know that meaningful and sustainable change takes work, and we are committed to robust policies and strategic actions.
History
Founded in 1999, LADA is a London-based charity, with a long history of supporting contemporary culture’s most radical artists, practices and ideas. Our specialised resources, projects and publications have been driven by an unwavering commitment to Live Art as a cultural strategy that makes space for the processes, practices, bodies and identities often excluded from traditional art and performance contexts.
A dedicated webpage with an overview and highlights from our 25-year history will be available soon.
The LADA Study Room at The White Building in Hackney Wick, 2013
Charity Information
The Live Art Development Agency is funded as a National Portfolio Organisation by Arts Council England, but this only covers a very small percentage of the work we do. You can find out more about how to support us here.
The Live Art Development Agency is a Company Limited by Guarantee, Registered in England and Wales, No. 3651554.
The Live Art Development Agency is a Registered Charity, No. 1079943.
Banner image credit: Nando Messias, Art & The Self: What Did Narcissus See?. DIY, 2018. Image Holly Revell.
