Bringing together cultural organisations, programmers and festivals in the UK and Europe
Through Bespoke Brokers, we aim to bring together cultural organisations, programmers and festivals in the UK and Europe to foster collaboration.
We work with established UK showcasing platforms, enabling them to connect with their counterparts in Europe so they can build the connections they need for continued artistic exchange.
EU Bespoke Brokers at Outburst Queer Arts Festival: November 2021
Covid prevented us from welcoming our usual network of international delegates to Northern Ireland for the Outburst Queer Arts Festival, however, we were able to connect closer to home and hosted a group of EU Bespoke Brokers selected with British Council EU Arts staff using their local sector knowledge of LGBTQ+ arts communities.
As a result, we combined the resources of EU and Northern Ireland Arts to welcome queer arts programmers, festival directors, filmmakers, gender non-conforming artists, LGBTQ+ activists and community workers from Greece, Germany, Romania, Ireland, Poland, France, Italy and the UK.
MASS, a large-scale, symphonic audio-visual work, was presented by the multi awarding winning opera/music-theatre composer Conor Mitchell of the Belfast Ensemble at the Belfast Telegraph Printworks in collaboration with the Ulster Orchestra – commissioned by the Outburst Queer Arts Festival and co-supported by the British Council, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, the Paul Hamlyn Foundation and Belfast City Council.
The visit proved transformational in linking us to a new Bespoke Brokers Global Programme model and the ‘prototype’ event has sparked new projects and grants for the EU and EDI Queer Arts sector that we are now co-developing as follow-up in 2022. These include three new European grants and an EU delegation visit to Marseille’s Transform! Festival in May 2022. We aim to further harness the relationships and arts engagement that the EU delegates and the Bespoke Brokers project has allowed us.
Outburst maintains its connections with the Americas and MENA delegations of previous years through the International Collaboration Fund, having been recently successful in the most recent open call – connecting the Risco Festival in Brazil and FAQ in Argentina with Northern Ireland.