At The Mill Arts Centre, we are passionate about supporting the development of artists and fostering creativity within our community. Our Supported Artists Scheme is a vital part of this mission, offering artists the opportunity to develop their creative practice and create new work in collaboration with local communities in Banbury and Bicester.
The scheme aims for artists to work collaboratively with a community group, ensuring that the process and result are relevant and resonate with the users. Artists will need to have a flexible approach, being willing and able to accommodate the needs of the community group.
Our Supported Artists will:
It is expected that the R&D phase will lead into a proposal where we will continue to work with the artist and community group to create new work to be presented at a later date.
I am a choreographer and community dance artist working with movement to create open and accessible opportunities for performers, community members, and collaborators that acknowledge and interrupt invisible structures of hierarchy existing within our culture. My choreographic work invites people to consider ideas and concepts from alternative perspectives as a way to imagine and create a more open and flexible world.
My community practice is person-centred and encourages people to explore their potential at their own pace and develop their physicality, building self-awareness and confidence by being creative and expressing their imagination. I was honoured to work with Wheelfever Projects as lead practitioner over seven years where I developed my skills in inclusive practice. The group brings together disabled and non-disabled young people, to develop their performance and choreographic skills in a safe and supportive space. Now, I am delighted to enhance these skills by working with Silver Shakers, an Oxford based dance group for people aged 50 plus.
As Artistic Director of Jane Castree Dance Collaborations and Associate artist at Barbican Theatre, Plymouth I championed collaborative practice by exploring the meeting points with other art forms such as lighting, film, sound design and digital technology. I was thrilled to be selected for DanSCe Dialogues 2 Lighting Lab, and mentored by Russell Maliphant and Michael Hulls on the collaborative process between light and movement.
As an artist committed to interdisciplinary practice, I’m part of a multi-disciplinary team for Oxford University’s Shaping Destiny project, and am lead dance artist on Dancin’ Oxford and Oxford City Council’s Dancer in Community Residence project in Barton, working across multi-disciplinary teams to support thriving communities. Next I am embarking on a Creative Residency at Modern Art Oxford, as part of their Boundary Encounters Exhibition. I will be facilitating collaborative research with audiences to ensure that my next choreographic work Bye, Bye Binary, which is based on the work of bell hooks about deconstructing dominator culture, gives voice to marginalised viewpoints.
My work has been supported by Arts Council England, Falmouth University, The Works, Plymouth Dance, Dance in Devon, The Barbican Theatre, Take Art and Interreg.
Caroline Horton is a theatre maker, performer and writer whose work has toured nationally and internationally.
She was nominated for a 2013 Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Affiliate Theatre for You’re Not Like The Other Girls Chrissy, which also won The Stage Awards Best Solo Performer in 2010. Mess opened at The Traverse, Edinburgh in 2012, where it won Best Ensemble at The Stage Awards and was nominated for an Offie for Best New Play.
Her controversial show Islands, opened at The Bush, London in 2015 before transferring to the 2015 British Council Showcase at the Edinburgh Festival. Caroline wrote and performed Tranklements for the New Vic and Penelope RETOLD for Derby Theatre, which toured nationally in 2015.
She writes regularly for BBC Radio 4, Paris, Nana & Me was shortlisted for the 2014 Imison Award and she has also written for award-winning series’ Tracks and Home Front.
Caroline regularly collaborates with other theatre companies as a deviser, performer, writer and director, recently she’s collaborated as writer/director with Evie Fehilly, Amerah Saleh, Vital Xposure and Coventry City of Culture. She also mentors artists and companies and leads workshops. Caroline was BBC Birmingham Writer in Residence, working across radio and TV dramas produced in the city.
She was 2018/19 Creative Fellow at Birmingham University’s Shakespeare Institute, teaching undergrad and MA students and developing a new piece with The Other Place (RSC). In 2019 she toured her first show for young people, Muckers, made with the egg, Bath and Conde Duque, Madrid and opened her latest solo show All of Me in Edinburgh where it won the Fringe Mental Health Award and a Stage Award, before transferring to The Yard in London. During lockdown she created online and audio versions of All of Me and the original stage version toured in 2022.
www.carolinehorton.net
Twitter @carolineplays
Insta @carohorton
