Our History
Creating the conditions for innovation, experimentation and risk to thrive – for 25 years and counting
Live Art Development Agency was founded in 1999 by Lois Keidan and Catherine Ugwu, who previously worked together at the Live Arts Department of the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), showcasing boundary-pushing work and significantly contributing to the growth of Live Art in London and the UK during the 1990s. Following their departure from the ICA, and with funding from London Arts Board, LADA was established as a direct response to the growing need for support and infrastructure for Live Art practices at the time, and played a pivotal role in legitimising Live Art as a distinct area of practice in the decades to follow.
From its inception, LADA has been supporting contemporary culture’s most radical and inventive artists, practices and ideas, and advocating for Live Art as a fiercely politicised approach to art-making – a cultural strategy to include experimental processes and practices that might otherwise be excluded from established curatorial, cultural and critical frameworks. At the core of LADA’s mission lay the commitment to champion new ways of working, legitimise unclassifiable artforms, record untold histories, and support the agency of underrepresented artists.
Working strategically, in consultation and in partnership were foundational principles of LADA, as well as reducing economic barriers to interacting with Live Art through free events, resources and programmes. Throughout its history, LADA has seen Live Art as a research engine driven by artists who are working across forms, contexts and spaces to open up new artistic models, new languages for the representation of ideas, and new ways of activating audiences and intervening in public life. Live Art breaks the rules of who is making art, how they are making it, where they are making it, and who they are making it for.
What started as a couple of desks and VHS players in a small office in Truman’s Brewery in the East End of London evolved into a thriving Centre for Live Art, producing specialised projects, publications, resources and opportunities for those who make, watch, research, study, teach, produce, present, write about and archive Live Art. In 2015 LADA became an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation, having grown far beyond the expectations of its founders while remaining dedicated to the transformative potential of Live Art.
Projects & Events
Since 1999, with varying degrees of funding and organisational resources, LADA has been presenting events and public programmes with an unwavering commitment to amplifying marginalised voices and practices. Some milestones include:
- Live Culture (2003), four days of high-profile events and performances at Tate Modern, celebrating the place of performance within the visual arts.
- Restock, Rethink, Reflect (from 2006), an ongoing series of research initiatives for, and about, artists whose work engages with issues of identity politics and cultural diversity in innovative and radical ways. The themes of the five RRR programmes were race (2006-08), disability (2009-12), feminism (2013-15), privilege (2016-18), and Managing The Radical (2019-21).
- Performing Rights (2006-2008), a programme of UK and international events curated and produced in collaboration with Lois Weaver of Queen Mary University of London relating to the intersections of performance and human rights, alongside Library of Performing Rights, the unique collection of resources, and the Library of Performing Rights Commission (2018-2019).
- Performance Matters (2009-2012), a ground-breaking AHRC-funded research project undertaken with Gavin Butt and Adrian Heathfield of Goldsmiths and the University of Roehampton, considering the cultural value of Live Art.
- LADA Screens (2015-2024), a series of free in-person and online screenings of seminal performance documentation, works to camera, short films/video and archival footage.
- Playing Up (2016) and Animals of Manchester (2019), projects in collaboration with Sibylle Peters focussing on Live Art and children, in partnership with Tate Early Years and Family Programmes and Manchester International Festival.
Martin O'Brien, 'Mucus Factory', commissioned as part of Restock, Rethink, Reflect Two: on Live Art and disability. Image Manuel Vason
La Pocha Nostra, ‘Ex Centris (A Living Diorama of Fetish-ized Others)', performed as part of Live Culture. Tate Modern, 2003. Image Manuel Vason
Opportunities
From its early years, following rigorous consultation with artists of mixed career levels, LADA identified the lack of professional development opportunities for artists working with Live Art and made part of its core activities to address this need. Opportunities throughout the years include:
- One to One Individual Artists’ Bursaries in Live Art (1999-2006), annual programmes of bursaries awarded to artists to undertake self-determined artistic and professional development.
- East End Collaborations and Everything You Wanted To Know About Live Art But Were Afraid To Ask… (1999-2009), yearly events in partnership with Queen Mary University of London offering a platform for recent graduates and emerging artists and an introduction to the workings of the Live Art sector.
- DIY (2002-2020, reactivated as DIT in 2026), LADA’s flagship programme of collaborative workshop projects, run by artists, for artists.
- Legacy: Thinker in Residence Awards (2008-2013) recognising artists whose work tested the possibilities of live practices and influenced the field of Live Art, in partnership with Tate Research.
- The Arthole Artist’s Award (2016-2019), supporting UK-based artists to undertake a self determined year-long research and artistic development programme.
- Diverse Actions Leadership Bursaries (2017-2019), a LAUK initiative supporting a new generation of innovative leaders from culturally diverse backgrounds.
- The Garrett Centre Commission (2017-2019) called artists to respond to the physical, cultural and social context of LADA’s base in The Garrett Centre in East London.
- The Katherine Araniello Bursary Awards (2020), for radical and politicised ‘early career’ artists who identify as disabled people, established to honour the legacy of audacious activist and artist Katherine Araniello.
- Live Art in Rural UK (2023), a year-long programme amplifying the embodied practices of artists living and working in rural locations.
Nicola Hunter, Raising The Skirt, 2014, Newcastle Image credit Dawn Felicia Knox
The Disabled Avant Garde, ‘Wendeville and Manlock’ as part of M21: From the Medieval to the 21st Century. LADA with DASH, 2012, Much Wenlock. Image Richard Foot
LADA is a safe haven for artists who make unsafe work in an unsafe world.
Publications
LADA Publishing started in 2007 and established LADA as the world’s leading Live Art publisher. The books, films and artists’ editions we have published and co-published feature some of the most provocative ideas and practitioners working in Live Art, and pioneering research by thinkers in the field.
We collaborated with Intellect Books for Intellect Live, a series of seven publications on influential artists working at the edges of performance. The series is characterised by lavishly illustrated and exquisitely designed books, created through close collaborations between artists and writers, each of which is the first substantial publication dedicated to an artist’s work.
As well as partnering with major publishers on key titles, including MIT Press on Out of Now: The Lifeworks of Tehching Hsieh and Oberon Books on the Live Art Almanac series, we have also published our own books and editioned artworks, and collaborated with artists working on independent publications.
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"Pleading in the Blood: The Art and Performances of Ron Athey", published by the Live Art Development Agency and Intellect, 2013.
Resources
LADA provides all sorts of free-to-access resources for artists, students and professionals – both online and in our space in Bethnal Green. Our online resources include our Study Room Guides, our online video and audio channels, a series of project specific LADA websites hosting curated content and documentation, and our Special Collections.
Our core resource is the Live Art Research Collection, born as a response to the early days’ enquiries of artists, curators, scholars and researchers to access the performance documentation that LADA had in its possession. Known as the Study Room until 2025, it is the world’s largest collection of research materials on Live Art, containing over 8,000 items that include out-of-print books and rare documentation.
Unbound (relaunched as Live Art Bookshop in 2025) is an online shop specialising in distributing the unruly ideas, methodologies and histories of interdisciplinary practices, globally, including hard-to-find publications, media and limited editions, artists’ books and LADA’s own titles.
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Study Room at The Garrett Centre. Image Natalia Damigou-Papoti
Higher Education
LADA has been working closely with a wide range of scholars and universities throughout its history, testing and expanding the intersections of artistic practices and research focused projects. A commitment that manifested from LADA’s early years with the initiation of the informal ‘Live Art in Higher Education in London Forum’ in partnership with Lois Weaver at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), led to projects such as Performance Studies international 12 Performing Rights, hosted at QMUL in 2006 with LADA as a cultural partner, the AHRC-funded research project Performance Matters (2009-2012), and to the MA Live Art (from 2018), the only postgraduate course of its kind, co-convened with QMUL.
Guest lecture with Ron Athey, MA Live Art, 2019. Photo by Joseph Morgan Schofield.
LAUK
Since the early 2000s, LADA has been facilitating Live Art UK, a national network of venues, festivals and facilitators who collectively represent a range of practices and are concerned with all aspects of the development of the Live Art sector across the UK.
Through LAUK, we’ve been delivering national impact projects such as Diverse Actions (2017-20) which addressed the historic lack of racial equality in artist and arts leadership development; exploring new ways to increase the national and international visibility of Live Art; initiating strategies for a more sustainable future for Live Art practitioners and promoters; and aiming to provide a representative voice for the Live Art Sector in the UK.
Season Butler, ‘Happiness Forgets’, as part of Diverse Actions’ SKIN IN THE GAME. 2019. Image Chan-Yang Kim
Spaces
LADA has been based in the East End since it was established. Its first offices were at Truman’s Brewery in Brick Lane (1999-2004), later at Rochelle School in Arnold Circus (2004-2012), and at The White Building in Hackney Wick (2012-2017).
In September 2017, LADA moved into The Garrett Centre, a former Unitarian mission in Mansford Street, Bethnal Green, with the support of a ‘Small Capital’ grant from Arts Council. The relocation meant that LADA had more physical space than ever before for the expansion of the Study Room, an expanded public events programme and the introduction of the Desk Scheme and various Residence schemes.
LADA opening at the Garrett Centre. 4 October 2017. Image George Hunt
AGENCY: A Partial History of Live Art
Including almost 50 contributing artists and scholars, this collection of conversations, provocations and images took the twentieth anniversary of the LADA’s founding as an opportunity to consider not only what Live Art has been against, but also what it has been for. Through the work of this particular ‘Agency’, the book explores the idea of agency more generally: how Live Art has enabled the possibility for new kinds of thoughts, actions and alliances for diverse individuals and groups.
This is a book about ‘relations and commitments’, to borrow a phrase from the introduction: histories, practices, discourses, places, people, ideas, politics. It maps and narrates a ‘field’ of art practices and where those practices, those ways of working, complicate and disturb other activities: activism, living, teaching and research. It may well turn out to be the book that I will be pointing students towards first for some while, to orient themselves in this field.
– Joe Kelleher, Professor of Theatre and Performance, University of Roehampton London
AGENCY: A Partial History of Live Art was edited by Theron Schmidt and co-published by LADA and Intellect Books in 2019.
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Recent Years
In LADA’s 20th anniversary in 2019, Director and Co-Founder Lois Keidan – together with staff and Board – developed plans to reimagine the future for the organisation’s next 20 years, responding to the possibilities and needs of the drastically different cultural, political and social conditions to those of LADA’s inception. LADA’s research project Managing the Radical provided a framework for this transition and aimed to begin a process of leadership succession. In 2020, Lois stepped aside and LADA announced the acceleration of the organisational transition. Practicing artists Barak adé Soleil and Chinasa Vivian Ezugha were appointed joint Co-Directors in 2021 and led the organisation until 2023, bringing a vision that centred a holistic understanding of artists’ needs, intersectionality, disability culture, access and resources. In 2023, Ria Righteous was appointed Interim Director to see LADA through a period of transition. She was joined by Interim Director Ruth Holdsworth in 2024, ahead of an international callout for new permanent leadership. In July 2024, Mary Osborn was appointed Director of LADA to begin a new chapter in our history.
Previous directors
- Lois Keidan, Co-Founder & Co-Director (1999–2021)
- Catherine Ugwu, Co-Founder & Co-Director (1999–2000)
- Daniel Brine, Associate Director (2000–2008)
- CJ Mitchell, Deputy Director (2009-2012); Co-Director (2012–2019)
- Barak adé Soleil, Co-Director (2021–2022)
- Chinasa Vivian Ezugha, Co-Director (2021–2023)
- Ria Righteous, Interim Director (June 2023–July 2024)
- Ruth Holdsworth, Interim Director (May–October 2024)
Previous staff members
Maria Agiomyrgiannaki, Katy Baird, Season Butler, Tania Camara, Uzma Chowdhury, Hannah Crosson, Natalia Damigou-Papoti, Rhiannon Davies, Alex Eisenberg, Ben William Harris, Rosaleigh Harvey-Otway, Jess Latowicki, Finn Love, Hannah Machlin, Andrew Mitchelson, Ankita Mukherji, Amy Poole, Joseph Morgan Schofield, Megan Vaughan, Aaron Wright.
Lois Keidan in conversation with Alex Eisenberg
Banner image: Oleg Kulik, Armadillo for Your Show, 2003. Performed as part of Live Culture at the Tate Modern. Image Manuel Vason
This text was written in January 2026 by Natalia Damigou-Papoti.
