The Brick Award

We want to encourage people to take a risk… we want to provide 'the right to fail'. Andy Arnold, Creative Director, The Arches.

Feature by Michael Witham | 10 Jul 2007
The Arches have long been among Scotland's most abundant and successful supporters of exciting new theatre, and with the growing commercialisation of the Edinburgh Fringe - an increasing concern among the theatre industry - it is reassuring to hear that Arches creative director Andy Arnold is launching a new initiative to support the most challenging and experimental theatre at the Fringe.

"It's so important to try and redress the balance between the artistic and the commercial aspects of the Fringe… and this is just one small way we're doing it with the Brick award – hopefully others will follow suit," says Arnold.

He has always been a staunch sponsor of bold and innovative theatre and this latest intervention, The Brick Award, is designed to do just that. The award offers £1000 to an emerging performance company or artist from the Fringe to re-stage their piece at the Arches Theatre. Eligible companies will have produced no more than three shows and will have what Arnold describes as an "experimental, risk-taking and bold approach to the exploration of new theatrical languages."

Arnold's ambition for the award is simple. "It will hopefully encourage more companies doing experimental risk taking work to come to the fringe." Under growing commercial pressure he worries that companies are disinclined to bring really edgy or challenging productions to the Fringe because it's so expensive. "It is quite a daunting thing to do and a lot of companies won't do it," explains Arnold. "They do work which is more tried and tested because it's not so much of a financial risk. Hopefully this award will encourage a few more companies to have a go." He's keen to show that there is still a market for really interesting and unusual new theatre and that companies should not shy away from taking chances. With this in mind he is adamant that the award will go to "a show that isn't necessarily financially viable… but is artistically pushing the envelope. We want to encourage people to take a risk… we want to provide 'the right to fail'."

It's true that there are already awards which credit great new writing at the Fringe, but Arnold sees The Brick Award as something quite different. "Fringe firsts and other awards are for the excellence of the piece whereas we are rewarding the potential of the company," he says. Of course, crucially, The Brick Award provides more than just the kudos, it gives the winner a real opportunity to take their work to a new city, a new audience, a new set of critics and to develop as a company in every way. Also vital is that the winner doesn't get to bring their show to just any city – Arnold considers Glasgow to be "...from a theatre point of view, the most exciting city outside London" and somewhere where fledgling companies are really given a huge range of opportunities. He suggests that, with the Fringe excluded, Glasgow has the upper hand over Edinburgh for new artistic talent because "there's more of a network of young artists working in Glasgow and more of a support structure for people to develop their work." Although he admits, "of course I'm biased…"

Even more exciting for the winning company is that with any luck they can look forward to more than just a one-off run with The Arches. Arnold hopes the award will help develop long term links. "It's part of the purpose of these things – to develop new relationships. We have relationships with companies that have been going for several years now – long may that continue." A key outcome of the awards is "fostering those relationships with actors, with directors and with theatre companies who all keep coming back here and trying different stuff out."

The Arches have been at the forefront of this kind of philanthropic artist initiative in Scotland for many years, and with this new award they are really proving how deserved their reputation for fostering young theatrical talent is. As the theatre industry becomes increasingly inaccessible to new companies and bringing work to the Fringe continues to be a potentially ruinous venture for less established artists, we can breathe a (small) sigh or relief in the knowledge that idealists like The Arches work tirelessly to champion the creativity and experimentation that made The Fringe great in the first place.