Chichester College students off to the Edinburgh Fringe

SussexWorld

Chichester College students are heading to the Edinburgh Fringe this summer – thanks to the college’s Edinburgh Project, a pioneering training opportunity for performers and production arts practitioners.

Transcript

00:00Good afternoon, my name is Phil Hewitt, group arts editor at Still Six Newspapers. Really

00:06lovely to speak to three crucial members of the team behind the Edinburgh Projects at

00:11Chichester College. And it's a super exciting thing. It's essentially new for this year,

00:15it's taking a couple of pieces to Edinburgh Fringe, but via Chichester. We get to see them

00:21in Chichester first. So Estelle, just in a nutshell, what is the Edinburgh Projects?

00:26So the Edinburgh Projects is, we believe we're the only college in the country to be offering

00:33a skills focused programme for emerging artists, both on stage and also production arts students.

00:42It offers a year long opportunity for students to work on original pieces of theatre, and then

00:49culminates in a week's residency at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

00:53It sounds fantastic. And Murray, the crucial thing, it's not just pretending to do it for real,

00:58it's really doing it for real, isn't it?

01:01Yes. Yeah, so it's a fantastic opportunity, because they actually get, as you say, real

01:07world experience in the industry, they get to see how exhausting, and how exciting, and how creative

01:17you can be in that environment. And yeah, experience it for real, yeah.

01:22Yeah. So Murray, what do you think they will gain from this?

01:27I think it's the appreciation of what goes into a project, not just their role, but all of the facets

01:35that come together to create that piece of theatre, an appreciation of taking ownership of their part

01:45in that, but also collaborating and working and supporting behind the scenes, as well as front of

01:51house and marketing. And it's quite likely that performers will have to do that when they progress

01:58from education into the real world, they have to create those projects themselves and create those

02:03opportunities. Yeah. Fantastic. And Emily, you are directing Salem, one of the two pieces, and

02:10crucially, it's a dance piece. Yes, it is. So it's drawing on a historical event that happened in real life,

02:17and we're modernising it, and we're looking at council culture. And have we really learned anything from

02:23the past? Essentially, no. Can we now? And it's using multidisciplinary, so it's projecting,

02:32we've got an original sound score, some beautiful original choreography, and making the dancers use

02:38their voices as well. Oh, that sounds brilliant. And Estelle, the year has presumably passed fairly

02:44rapidly, and you're starting to think about the Chichester productions, the performances, and then

02:49Edinburgh. The year has been a success, hasn't it, for this course? I think it's been a brilliant success,

02:57in terms of the student experience, the skills gained, our own professional development and

03:02working in a creative space that is very much part of the college community, but also exists in its own

03:07sort of bubble, at the side of the normal working day.

03:11Fantastic. Well, that sounds a brilliant thing to do. The preview performances are at Chichester

03:17College, Tuesday 24th of June to Thursday 26th of June at Riverside Theatre at Chichester College.

03:24Brilliant. Congratulations on the project. It sounds wonderful.

03:27Really good to speak to you all. Hope it goes brilliantly. Thank you.

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