A look at our 2022

16 Dec A look at our 2022

From all of us at Mimbre, we’re wishing you Peaceful Holidays!

2022 has not been an easy year for anyone, but we’ve pulled through to a successful end thanks to our fantastic and inspiring collaborators, artists, audiences and supporters!

We’ve worked with some amazing collaborators and freelancers over the past 12 months, and we wanted to end the year by looking at a few of the fun things that we’ve done.

A few highlights

++ We premiered and went on tour with our Daryl & Co co-production Look Mum, No Hands! taking it across the UK. We also have a fun trailer for the show which we published recently, so have a look. 
++ We took Lifted out on the road again and ventured back overseas. We even visited the United States, finishing the production’s 2022 tour at none other than the legendary Ringling Museum. 
++ Don’t miss our beautiful and quirky short art film Eye Ear You, which we worked on with our friend, Multidisciplinary Creative & Set Designer, Shona Heath. We hadn’t worked with her since the 2019 commission Dior’s Dream Parade, so this was such a great opportunity for us to combine our creative sparks once more! Let us know if you spotted any of the Eye Ear You posters dotted across east London this winter.
++ We’ve collaborated on exciting new projects and done some brilliant work with freelancers too:
– Garsington Opera’s Rusalka, which our joint Artistic Director Lina Johansson worked on as its circus choreographer, with a team of six circus performers alongside the opera singers. It went to the Edinburgh International Festival over the summer too..
– we were also featured in projects like Hackney Revealed Illuminated Arts Festival where the Lifted acrobats were projected onto Hackney Town Hall. It was great to work with creative studio SDNA on this!
– and we end this year having worked with the talented youth of The Circus Project in Hove to create a short curtain-raiser for Brighton Dome’s holiday show FIQ (on from 18th – 20th December if you’re in Brighton).
++ We’ve been so happy to be able to run and continue to grow our Mimbre Youth Programme with lovely, full-out energy from our young participants. Especially because, as of autumn 2022, we’ve been back at, in the words of one youth parent, its “spiritual home” of Milton Gardens Community Hall.
++ We’ve continued to use the Mimbre van to run deliveries for the Hackney Food Bank – that’s the third year in a row – and finished with delivering two van loads full of donations for Christmas!
++ And we’d like to end this by mentioning our artist and sector support work as well. Including mentoring and providing career and pastoral care to our brilliant pool of freelancers; being involved in Circus Change Up; attending, speaking and networking at conferences and events; and hosting training events for the sector. We have listened, learnt, shared and kept the future of circus and the wellbeing of the individuals that make circus extraordinary at the forefront of our minds. We will continue to work in this area into 2023 and beyond because there is still plenty more to do.

Thank you!

We want to end this message with a huge thank you to our funders and supporters.

Thank you to everyone who has helped us throughout the year. Our funders, Arts Council England, Hackney Council, Hackney Giving, National Lottery Community Fund, Charles S French, The Foyle Foundation, Leche Trust, Golsoncott Foundation and Localgiving. Our gratitude also goes out to those that have donated to Mimbre Youth. And of course, our amazing board for helping us navigate a busy year in the arts.