Outside the box: open-air performance as a pandemic response

2019冠状病毒病给艺术和文化组织带来了持久的挑战，需要根据公共卫生指南进行创新。然而，很少有人讨论剧院建筑之外用于表演的实践和场地的范围，以及社交距离，现场，户外艺术现场集会的实用性，特别是在公共空间。这个戏剧与管理研究的跨学科项目包括两个部分。该项目将与公民合作伙伴合作，确定如何将公共空间用于表演，利用封锁带来的社区参与和家庭以外的绿色空间，并与国家转型的愿望保持一致，以更好地从大流行中重建。虽然露天演出是文化重新开放的第一步，但仅仅在室外复制室内模式并不能解决关键的安全和管理问题。因此，第一部分旨在记录整个英国创新户外实践的性质和程度，并从两组主要利益相关者的角度理解管理挑战：艺术家和地方政府。利用特定场地、分散、门槛和生态表演的模式，以及与在这些类型中具有长期经验和专业知识的艺术家一起进行实践研究，第二部分需要在2021年委托进行一季的实践研究工作。工作节将使这些创新模式更加引人注目，并为英国范围内的现场表演文化的复兴做出贡献，提供可持续文化实践的范例，并协助地方政府在一个物理距离遥远的世界中促进文化的生活质量。

COVID-19 has introduced enduring challenges to arts and culture organisations, demanding innovation in response to public health guidelines. Yet there has been little discussion of the range of practices and sites being used for performance beyond theatre buildings, and the practicability of socially-distanced, live, in-person assembly for outdoor arts, especially in public spaces. This inter-disciplinary project between drama and management studies comprises two strands. The project will work with civic partners to identify how public spaces may be used for performance, harnessing the revivified community engagement with green spaces beyond the home, brought about by the lockdown and aligned with the national aspiration for transformation, to Build Back Better from the pandemic. While open-air performance has been a first stage in cultural re-opening, merely replicating indoor models outside does not resolve key safety and management issues. Hence, the first strand aims to document the nature and extent of innovative outdoor practices across the UK, and understand the management challenges from the perspective of two sets of principal stakeholders: artists and local government. Drawing on models of site-specific, dispersed, threshold, and ecological performances, alongside practice-as-research with artists who have long-term experience and expertise in these genres, the second strand entails a season of commissioned practice-as-research work in 2021. The festival of work will make these innovative models more visible and contribute to the revival of live performance cultures UK-wide, providing exemplars of sustainable cultural practices and assisting local government to facilitate culture for quality of life in a physically-distanced world.