Vamos Theatre's Creative Producer, Honor Hoskins, reflects on an intense, immersive, joyous and rejuvenating residency with this year’s wonderful Vamos Emerging Artists.

So, it’s the Monday morning after the Vamos Emerging Artist residency, which finished with a sharing on Saturday. I have definitely got the blues.

The intensity of the four days working together in the immersive creativity space at 101 Outdoor Arts Newbury are like nothing else. We are living, creating and playing together; and kept well fuelled by amazing food and cradled by the ever-supportive and incredible 101 team. It is two days of training, one day of devising and then we take our scratch performance to the streets of Newbury on the Saturday morning.

This year it has been a complete honour (no pun intended) co-delivering with Sean Kempton of Kook Ensemble and Cirque du Soleil and having Aadil Dinn with us as Peer Mentor and Welfare Officer; looking after everything from whether people have got enough bedding to call times! Mixing the training of playing and clowning with mask has been a winning combination, and we all came out feeling exhausted but rejuvenated. Thank you Sean and Aadil for everything.

Then, there is this year’s amazing cohort of artists, who ranged in age from 19 – 33 and came from far and wide; from Tokyo to Sheffield, Bilbao to Ilfracombe, Peterborough to Hong Kong. On Wednesday, they looked a tad nervous and left on Saturday announcing this was just the start of new journeys. In the rehearsal room, creativity and ambition were set alight, skills were soaked up, whilst round the fire of an evening, ideas were pondered and the seeds of new working relationships sewn.

I feel so fortunate to do the job I do, and it is a complete privilege to have a small part in shaping these young artists’ journeys. I am definitely the lucky one!

Thank you to The Garfield Weston Foundation, Arts Council England and our partner venues; The Landmark Theatre Ilfracombe, The Point Eastleigh, Arena Theatre Wolverhampton, Key Theatre Peterborough, University of York, University of Worcester, 101 Outdoor Arts Newbury, for making this project a reality.

See more about our Vamos Emerging Artists 2024 here.