Artsadmin’s Autumn ’26 Season

As Far As My Fingertips Take Me by Tania El Khoury. Photo by Tania El Khoury

Our well-loved Artist Support programme continues this season, alongside new opportunities directly shaped by what we’re hearing artists need the most. Plus, we’re taking a moment to celebrate new and familiar artist-friends busy developing their practice, presenting new work and touring. Find dates and details in the drop downs…

Come rain or shine, you’ll find a friendly Artsadmin welcome at Morning Creatives, with producers ready to help connect you with fellow creatives over a coffee, to chew over challenges and riff on new ideas – and it might end there or grow into an unexpected collaboration. Less pressure, more possibility – just two of the things we know are important to artists still finding their way through the early stages of a career. What we’re also hearing loud and clear is the need for more space to create, and our response is Last Minute Studio Hire – heavily discounted rates for short notice bookings across our six main rehearsal studios, making it easier for artists to maintain momentum when inspiration strikes. We’ve also expanded our mentoring offer to launch Creative Support Plus, meaning artists and producers can now pay for up to six subsidised one-to-one sessions, giving more sustained support.

This will run alongside our ongoing free Creative Support Sessions which artists tell us are “invaluable” conversations: from how to build meaningful networks, and navigating complex funding structures, to developing an idea or create a workable plan. Collectively, we offer around 120 hours of free mentoring a year supporting artists across all stages of their working lives. Remember, our focus is live art, contemporary performance and socially-engaged art practices so if that’s your bag, we’d love to meet you.

Collaborations with partners near and far continue our commitment to making space for artists to exchange ideas and nurture their practice, and for us to grow and learn alongside them. Following a sell-out week in July PROJEKT UTOPIA returns with a second round of Immersion Lab, featuring a line-up of experienced migrant artists working across live performance disciplines. Meanwhile, in Thailand, the second leg of our international exchange Lab XL, with Creative Migration/Bangkok 1899, will explore leadership through the lenses of care, access and sustainability.

On the first Wednesday of every month, we invite freelance artists, creatives, and producers working in contemporary performance and live art to join us at Toynbee Studios for a relaxed morning of connection, conversation, and creative exchange.

It’s an informal networking space to meet fellow practitioners, spark new ideas, and share what you’re working on. Bring your own brunch, settle in, and make the morning your own.

Morning Creatives | 7 October, 4 November and 2 December | Toynbee Studios

Looking for an affordable space at short notice? We’re trialling a new offer with heavily discounted rates on studio spaces that become available between our longer-term bookings.

Available spaces will be advertised on our website up to two weeks in advance, offering a flexible and affordable option for those able to work at short notice. Bookings are available in half-day slots (10am to 2pm and 2pm to 6pm), with the option to book both slots for a full day.

Last Minute Studio Hire | Find out more

Artsadmin offers free one‑to‑one micro‑mentoring for UK‑based artists, producers and creatives working in contemporary performance, socially engaged and live art practice at any career stage. Sessions usually last 45–60 minutes and each artist can access one free session per year.

If you would like further support beyond your free session, you can continue working with us through Creative Support Plus. This service offers artists, creatives, and cultural workers the option to book and pay for up to six one‑to‑one sessions with an Artsadmin Creative Support mentor. Please note: all sessions must be booked with the same mentor.

All income from Creative Support Plus is reinvested into our Artist Support and Development Programme, helping us create more opportunities for creatives.

Creative Support Plus | Find out more

IMMERSION LAB by PROJEKT UTOPIA returns for its second edition with a week-long programme exploring embodied approaches to performance-making.

Across five days, five different artists will lead workshops on physical practice to generate ideas, dramaturgy and scenic material. Workshops will draw on physical improvisation, movement scores, choreographic tools, ensemble composition, task-based performance and other embodied approaches to devising.

This is an exciting chance to supercharge your practice, connect with a vibrant community of artists, and make work that feels urgent, alive and unapologetically relevant.

IMMERSION LAB #2: Generating Performance Through the Body | 5 – 9 October | Toynbee Studios

Lab XL is a programme collaboration between Creative Migration/Bangkok 1899 and Artsadmin, supported by the British Council’s Connections Through Culture programme. While Lab X centred around an exchange between Thai & UK artists, Lab XL shifts the focus to leadership.

Find out more about LabXL and the cultural leaders behind the programme.

Lab XL: Care, Burnout, Access & Inclusion in the Cultural Sector | 9 October | Bangkok 1899, Thailand

Deeper into the season when the nights draw in, you’ll find us shining a spotlight on four incredible artists with industry-facing platform, Elaborate. On 1 November Claudia Palazzo, Elana Binysh, Yasmeen Audisho Ghrawi and Victor Esses take over Toynbee Studios to share works in progress that first appeared with us during Lab 2025. This is all about peer and sector feedback, away from the gaze of public audiences (for now), so if you’re a live art producer, programmer or signed up to our artist support mailing list, you’ll likely hear from us with an invitation. We can’t mention Elaborate without a quick shout out to the cohorts of this year’s Lab: Brahim Jumaa, Naresh Kaushal and Zhaolin Zhou completed week-long residencies in August and Philip Ewe, Qingyang Lu and Rudzani Moleya will join us in October. Every Lab residency unfolds differently, but the shared experience of artists working with us at the same time helps build lasting relationships.

And speaking of lasting relationships… an artist we’ve been proud to work with for many years on a number of touring projects, is Tania El Khoury. Based between Beirut, New York and London, with a catalogue of projects that span the globe, Tania’s ideas never stop moving. This Autumn As Far As My Fingertips Take Me, which explores refuge seeking and physical connection travels to Halifax, (Canada) alongside video-installation Camp Pause, before heading to Helsinki for Moving in November Festival. And following presentations in Nyon and Fribourg earlier this year, her outdoor live art project Memory of Birds, which invites audiences to lie amongst trees and listen to a guided somatic experience, arrives in Marseille for Performer la Ville Festival. Meanwhile, Tania will be in Paris developing brand new multi-media performance piece Choreography of State, working with dance artists and making an appearance herself in an exploration of resisting militarised policing. This work is supported by Creative Capital Award and co-produced by Bard Fisher Center LAB Evidence and Chaillot – Théâtre National de la Dance, Paris, where it premiers 8-10 October – we’ll see you there if you can make it along.

Finally, more work from artist-friends to shout out is Now Not Now by Cade & MacAskill with Yas Clarke & Tim Spooner. Whilst this means you won’t see The Making of Pinocchio out and about this season, we can’t wait to see their new exploration into how we experience the flow of time at Southbank’s second iteration of KUNSTY 5 & 6 November.

That’s all for now. Stay up to date on Instagram and LinkedIn and we’ll be back at the end of the year with a wrap on 2026.

Artsadmin Lab is a curated residency programme based at Toynbee Studios, supporting artists in the early stages of developing new work.

These residencies offer dedicated time and space for live and interdisciplinary practices. Rather than working towards a finished outcome, artists use the programme to research, test ideas, build collaborations and deepen their projects.

Find out more about Artsadmin Lab Artists 2026

As Far As My Fingertips Take Me is an encounter through a gallery wall between an audience member and a refugee. Their arms touch without seeing each other.

The refugee will mark the audience by drawing on their arm. The audience will listen to those who have recently challenged border discrimination. The marking can be kept or washed away.

As Far As My Fingertips Take Me | 28 September – 2 October | Prismatic Arts Festival | Halifax, Canada

As Far As My Fingertips Take Me | 6 – 8 November | Moving In Festival | Helsinki, Finland

We know very little about why Palestinian camps are located where they are. We also know little about the trajectories of their communities. We often assume that, upon their arrival, refugees were directly transported to tents that later became “camps.” Reflecting on ideas of refuge and the sea that connects them to Palestine, Camp Pause follows four residents of the Rashidieh Refugee Camp located on the coast of Lebanon, just south of the city of Tyre. The residents trace their everyday routes from their homes to the sea, to a chosen spot on the seashore. Along the way, they weave simultaneous narratives about the history of the land, their arrival, the struggle to build, and everyday life in the camp.

Camp Pause | 28 September – 2 October | Prismatic Arts Festival | Halifax, Canada

Memory of Birds is an interactive sound installation that unfolds among trees in the open space, and is developed in collaboration with a trauma therapist and the migratory pathways of birds. Situated at the intersection of ecology, memory, and political history, the work investigates forms of violence that become embedded within the land itself -violence that is both materially buried in the ground and obscured within collective memory. Through sound, listening, and guided somatic engagement, the installation invites participants to encounter landscapes as living archives that bear the traces of displacement, conflict, extraction, and survival.

Memory of Birds | 16 – 18 October | Performer la Ville | Marseille, France

10 September 2026 Categories: Stories