2024 SEEDBED Artists

Ella Jarman-Pinto and Jennifer Farmer

Ella Jarman-Pinto is a critically acclaimed composer who focuses on positive-change storytelling and collaborating with artists who reject the phrase ‘this is how things are done here’. Jennifer Farmer is a queer African-American woman, a writer for performance and facilitator who centres systematically excluded narratives and collaborates extensively with communities made vulnerable.

belly/back is an interactive communal opera-in-progress, which evokes what it means to centre your softness when existing in a Black, neurodivergent femme/politically feminised body, actively rejecting the trope of the resilient, strong Black woman. By performing the opera in outdoor, rural landscapes, belly/back dismantles the hierarchy in classical music, and reclaims the history and contribution of people of African heritage in nature/rural spaces. Radical rest and softness are at the heart of belly/back, so they will explore the impact of sleep and mental health disparity on Black women and politically feminised people.

Grace The Space

Grace The Space is led by practicing artists Natasha, Ruth and Alice. GTS was co-founded by Natasha Nixon and Ruth Pitter in 2021 as part of the Women Leaders Southwest Programme supported by The Arts Council England Transforming Leadership Grant and Activate Performing Arts.

GTS exists to remove barriers to creative arts and landscapes for marginalised women who are not usually seen in these settings without judgement or threat. Co-creating with women, they will explore accessible and unexpected live performance and installation work in non-performative spaces. They aim to increase confidence and expression within marginalised communities whilst being equally progressive and bold with their creative ambition, exploring scale and empowering women in landscapes.

Nandita Shankardass

Nandita Shankardass is a performing artist, choreographer, educator, interdisciplinary facilitator and the founder of Welcome Movement®, created to generate wellbeing, stimulate creativity and empower freedom of expression through movement and dance.

She is developing a dance work and participatory experiences exploring ancestry, agriculture, ecological activism and the inherent wisdom of women. Her research will consider and reflect on the importance of our dependency on water and soil, food production, our relationship to the land and to one another. Remembering events throughout India’s history from the cotton empire and the spinning wheel to the Chipko movement and the violence of the green revolution, the work aspires to build awareness around our contribution to the ecosystem to regenerate and deepen our relationship to the earth, evoking freedom, resilience and community.

Red Herring Productions

Red Herring is an outdoor arts company based in Bideford, North Devon who make and curate performances for street corners, urban parks and more remote landscape settings. They are fascinated in the blurred edges between the audience and the performance and specialise in intimate performance for small groups, where they connect directly with people and provide space for them to take part.

They will explore a bold, new show - The Ripple Effect. This show explores water as a resource and looks to use the mechanics of performance to induce a deep, embodied experience of our effect on the world, how we use water and how we might share it. They will explore playful and immersive experience - involving puppets, sound, mythology, text and water as a material to move, touch and taste.