Artsadmin’s Autumn/Winter 2025/2026 Season

Image: The Search for Power by Tania El Khoury and Ziad Abu-Rish. Photo by Elina Giounanli

And here we are… turning the page on a season, excited to share what we’ve been busy working on to present, near and far, this autumn/winter. With work at our studios and elsewhere in London, across Europe and in Japan, you’ve some incredible opportunities to connect with us and the outstanding artists and partners we’re collaborating with.

Firstly, for those of us based in the UK, a chance to see Cade & MacAskill’s The Making of Pinocchio a bit closer to home as it stops at Dublin Theatre Festival from 25 – 27 September. Now led by previous Artsadmin Artistic Director, Róise Goan, we’re delighted to be part of her inaugural festival. The season tour kicks off next week at Homo Novus festival in Riga on 3 – 4 September, then heads to Łódź for S-PLOT festival from 6 – 7 October and – for now – finishes at DE SINGEL in Antwerp from 17 – 23 November. Keep your eyes peeled for new dates that might pop up early in 2026.

Further afield (unless you’re based in Japan), is Tania El Khoury and Ziad Abu-Rish’s The Search for Power which arrives at Kyoto Experiment 4 October – 16 November. Presenting as performance and installation, there’s also a rare opportunity to hear Tania talk about the creation of the work, which centres the history of power outages in Lebanon and the introduction of electricity to Beirut. Please let us know if you’re local and can make it, or if you know someone in the city, why not encourage them to go along? Arigatō.

And wrapping up our presented programme we’re thrilled to confirm that the new show we’ve been developing with Tink Flaherty, Gen X Gen Z, can be seen for the very first time on 5 November as part of Southbank Centre’s KUNSTY series. Written and performed by real life parent and daughter, Tink and Abra Flaherty, Gen X Gen Z challenges the ‘traditional family’ – in fact, in Tink’s own words, this show is for ‘weirdo families’. Told with beautiful honesty, Mancunian charm and using their real-life experiences, please don’t miss this opportunity to catch the first (and only) preview of a brand-new work, made possible with an Unlimited 2024 UK Open Award. Tickets are already on sale and will be selling faster by the time you read this…

Set in a fictional film studio, you are invited to go behind the scenes of Cade & MacAskill’s creative process and their relationship, and question what it takes to tell your truth.

Artists and lovers Rosana Cade and Ivor MacAskill began creating The Making of Pinocchio in 2018, developing alongside Ivor’s gender transition. In this ‘funny, clever and thoughtful two-hander, rich in playful imagery’ (The Guardian) their tender and complex autobiographical experience meets the magical story of the lying puppet who wants to be a ‘real boy’.

With an ingenious scenography designed by Tim Spooner, layered with sound by Yas Clarke, lights by Jo Palmer and cinematography from Kirstin McMahon and Jo Hellier, the show constantly shifts between fantasy and authenticity, humour and intimacy, on stage and on screen.

3 – 4 September | The International Festival of Contemporary Theatre Homo Novus | Rīga, Latvia

25 – 27 September | Dublin Theatre Festival | Dublin, Ireland

6 – 7 October | S-PLOT International Festival of Performative Arts for Children and Young People | Łódź, Poland

21 – 22 November | DE SINGEL | Antwerp, Belgium

On a night with a sudden electricity outage in their Beirut neighbourhood, Tania El Khoury and her husband, the historian Ziad Abu-Rish, discussed the history of power cuts in Lebanon. Born during the Lebanese Civil War, El Khoury grew up with the understanding that the problem with the country’s electricity was rooted in this conflict. However, Abu-Rish recalled finding a government document dated 1952 that announced scheduled electricity outages across Beirut.

The couple decided to research the history of power outages in Lebanon, delving into the intersections between public utilities infrastructure, people’s relationship to the state, and various popular mobilisations that have shaped both. Their investigation reached as far back as the introduction of electricity to Beirut, before it was even possible to imagine a Lebanese state. The documents they collected come from across Lebanon and beyond its borders, extracted from the archives of colonial powers: Belgium, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. What they pieced together is a transnational story that locates electricity at the intersection of colonial legacies, the machinations of political and economic elites, and everyday acts of resistance, survival, and sabotage.

The Search for Power presents a record of El Khoury and Abu-Rish’s conversations, research, and findings in a performance and installation

The Search for Power is a lecture and installation performance featuring the artist, the historian, and the audience.

4 – 9 October | Performance | Kyoto Experiment | Kyoto, Japan

6 October | Artist Talk with Tania El Khoury | Kyoto Experiment | Kyoto, Japan

11 October – 16 November | Installation | Kyoto Experiment | Kyoto, Japan

A preview of a show about parenting, being parented and the ongoing process of becoming who you are, no matter what your age, with your family as your witness.

Tom of Finland. Turkey Basters. Love Island. Raving at the Hacienda decades apart. Just the usual parent and child catch-up. For Tink (parent) and Abra (child), it’s just another Tuesday.

This is a show about parenting when you have no blueprint and when you don’t know if you’re a mum or a dad. It’s about growing up when your politics at home is miles ahead of the outside world. Imagine being parented by a Mancunian renegade who stays out all night but gets cross when you do.

5 November | KUNSTY | Southbank Centre

Here at Toynbee Studios, we’ll continue our popular artist support programme with a few tweaks in response to direct feedback and the changing needs of artists and creatives. We’re also hosting more artist labs and trying out new events.

Still on the first Wednesday of every month, but in its new late morning/lunch slot, we invite independent artists, creatives and producers working in contemporary performance and live art to join us in person for Morning Creatives. What was our Morning Producers programme has been re-booted to better reflect the wide range of creative backgrounds and disciplines of those who regularly attend.

Building on the success of DYCP Homework Clubs, we’re piloting a new series of Homework Clubs about arts administration topics and tools previous ‘clubbers’ told us they’d like to focus on. The next session will look at Artist Portfolio Development, and will be led by the brilliant Kamari Romeo, our Assistant Producer.

If you’re looking for something more practice-based, we’re partnering with live artist Elana Binysh who’s running a Cripping Autobiographical Practice* workshop on 27 October. Disabled-led and open to all abilities, Elana will lead participants through a series of exercises that draw on lived experience to explore and develop autobiographical performance making strategies.

Our big homegrown collaboration this season is with Dash Arts to deliver We Are Free To Change The World – a new series of Dash Cafés taking place in our theatre and café spaces from November through to March ‘26. With live performance, film and crucial time to connect, each event will explore how artists and creative activists respond – together – to the urgent challenges of our times. Register your interest now to receive a message when booking opens at the end of September, alongside full guest line-ups.

Not all of our work at Toynbee Studios is open to the public but it’s definitely worth shouting about; we adore our Lab artist residency programme – money, space and lots of producer time – and this season we’ll host three artists/artist companies in November, found through a new open call process. As we write this, the team is busy identifying who’ll join us, and we’ll share more details in the coming months so please watch this space… In the meantime, we’re thrilled to announce 3oubour x Lab X, an international residency programme with new partners The Arab British Centre, A.MAL Projects (UK), and Takafes (Morocco). Five national and international artists who use (and misuse) sculpture, architecture, raw materials, and digital technologies will travel to Fez for a one-month residency in September, before undertaking a two-week residency with us in November. You can get closer to the artists and their work in a sharing we’ll host in their final week – register your interest and we’ll send you more information about this in October.

And finally, now with over 15,000 subscribers, we know how much you love the weekly Anchor for peer and sector-sourced opportunities, so have increased the scope of support available with a refreshed Anchor Directory. More up to date, and relevant*, the Anchor Directory brings together a wide range of contacts including cultural organisations, funding bodies, mailing lists, and studio spaces. *We’ve done the updating this time but need you and our network to help us keep it in good shape.

We hope you’ll find a show, session or something online to connect with us this autumn/winter.

Artsadmin’s Homework Club is a welcoming space for performance-based and multi-disciplinary artists, producers, and creatives to come together, learn and make progress on projects. Sessions encourage you to make space in your week to tackle tasks you’ve been putting off, whilst getting valuable feedback and support from Artsadmin’s producers.

In this hands-on workshop, you’ll learn how to design a professional artist portfolio that opens doors to grants, residencies, festivals, and venues.

The first hour of this session will feature an informative presentation by Kamari Romeo – Artsadmin’s Assistant Producer. Afterwards, the space will become an open co-working session that you’re welcome to drop in and out of.

10 September | Artist Portfolio Development | 6.30pm – 9pm | Toynbee Studios

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 Morning  Creatives.

Morning Creatives is a monthly networking event for freelance artists, creatives, and producers working across contemporary performance and live art.

Bring your own lunch, meet fellow creatives, share what you’re working on, and spread the word about upcoming opportunities and events.

1 October | 11am – 1pm | Toynbee Studios

5 November | 11am – 1pm | Toynbee Studios

3 December | 11am – 1pm | Toynbee Studios

This is a collaborative workshop developed for Disabled artists, including Neurodivergent artists, interested in making Crip autobiographical work. Within the workshop, participants will explore performance making strategies and norms and find ways to subvert them.

The exercises are designed to be interpreted in any form. We will use autobiographical material, build illogical, unreadable performance scores that allow for mess and failure, and generate content that doesn’t ignore our access needs, instead using them as creative tools. We will make things, share back and discuss what we find.

The workshop explores techniques Elana has been using during the making of her current work I think it was a feeling: An instruction based performance and audio work using liquids for audiences to consider their relationship to bodily fluids and shame. The work exists as both a live performance and a headphone piece, to be listened to and followed at home.

*Cripping references Crip theory.

Crip theory is an academic field which Queers disability studies.

“Queering disability studies or claiming disability in and around queer theory, however, helps create critically disabled spaces overlapping with the critically queer spaces that activists and scholars have shaped during recent decades, in which we can identify and challenge the ongoing consolidation of heterosexual, able-bodied hegemony.”

Robert McRuer

27 October | 6.30 – 9.30pm | Toynbee Studios

WE ARE FREE TO CHANGE THE WORLD

A Dash Arts and Artsadmin series

We Are Free to Change the World is a new series of three Dash Cafés exploring how artists and creative activists respond to the urgency of our times. Through performance, film and conversation, each event, chaired by Dash Arts artistic director Josephine Burton, brings together creative voices to consider how we act—and how we do this together. A collaborative act between Artsadmin and Toynbee Studios resident, Dash Arts, the series also celebrates Dash Arts’ 20th birthday, 18th year in the building, and is part of the Fête of Britain.

Framed around preparation (READY), balance (STEADY) and movement (GO), the series will make space for connection and reflection, for building or sharing tools and practices, and might be the starting point for something new we imagine together.

The events take place 6 – 9pm on 20 November, 22 January and 19 March.

13 August 2025 Categories: Blog