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.
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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.