PLAYING UP Symposium: Live Art For Kids and Adults

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Date: Monday 04 Apr 2016
Address: Starr Auditorium
Tate Modern
London
Price: £15 (£10 concessions). Bookings open in February

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PLAYING UP is an artwork by Sibylle Peters, exploring the potential of Live Art to bridge generations. Drawing on key Live Art themes and seminal works, PLAYING UP takes the form of a game played by adults and kids together.

The launch of PLAYING UP will be marked with a major symposium with leading thinkers and practitioners in the field.

Symposium contributors include artists, researchers, curators and educators from the UK and Germany: Sibylle Peters (Theatre of Research), Darren O’Donnell (Mammalian Diving Reflex), Eilidh MacAskill (artist), Matt Fenton (Contact Theatre), Random People (Esther Pilkington & Daniel Ladnar), Richard Dedomenici (artist), Professor Heike Roms (Aberystwyth University), The Institute for the Art & Practice of Dissent At Home, Lone Twin (artists), Zoe Laughlin (Institute of Making) Ansuman Biswas (artist), Professor Geesche Wartemann (University of Hildesheim), Professor Alan Read (King’s College London), Sarah-Jane Norman (artist), Harold Offeh (artist), Hannah Biedermann (Pulk Fiktion), John McGrath (Manchester International Festival), and Evan Ifekoya (artist).

The Symposium will:

Discuss what working with and for children can offer to Live Art.
Explore the possibilities of Live Art as a cultural strategy for children, in part by challenging the assumptions which may underline traditional education and family programming strategies.
Provide an overview of the opportunities and challenges of developing Live Art projects for, with and about kids.
Profile significant examples of Live Art projects with kids, and suggest the potential for future collaborations between artists and kids.
Share outcomes and knowledge about the new PLAYING UP resource and put the project in context.

The Symposium will be of interest to a range of artists, promoters, educators, scholars and researchers, as well as members of the general public who are engaged with these issues.

“Kids are explorers of the everyday. For them to light a match can be something extraordinary that needs focus and time and creates an experience. The same is true for everyone who practices Live Art. For us kids are perfect accomplices. And in return Live Art can provide something that is essential to all of us, but especially to kids and their well being: the acknowledgement of their action and their thinking, the reassurance that everything counts, that everything can make a difference, the frame of beauty and reflection and the experience that we can set it up anytime and anywhere we want. PLAYING UP is a playful, hands-on introduction to Live Art for everyone.” Sibylle Peters.

Purchase the PLAYING UP game on Unbound.

View the Playing Up dedicated website.

PLAYING UP has been conceived and created by Sibylle Peters of Theatre of Research (Germany) and designed by David Caines. PLAYING UP is produced and published in a collaboration between the Live Art Development Agency (LADA, UK), FUNDUS THEATER / Theatre of Research (Germany), Tate Early Years and Family Programme (UK), Best Biennial (Sweden) and Live Art UK, with the generous support of the Goethe-Institut London. PLAYING UP forms part of LADA’s contribution to the Collaborative Arts Partnership Programme (CAPP) supported by Creative Europe Programme of the European Union. PLAYING UP, the game, has been designed by David Caines (with additional designs by Maja Bechert). Website by Alex Eisenberg.