WildWorks is an internationally renowned theatre company, pushing boundaries of participative and professional practice with a reputation for working on large scale public projects. As an artist-led company based in Cornwall, WildWorks balances high production values with a distinctive commitment to community engagement. WildWorks’ shows happen in found landscapes rather than formal theatre spaces. They reflect and embrace the host communities from which they draw their meaning. WildWorks has visited Kosovo with MaK and hopes to lead a project on the Manchester Peace Park, Poujevë.
Over thirty years, a distinctive strand of non-building based performance has evolved in the South West of the UK. Bill Mitchell – Artistic Director – has been central to this evolving experiment and WildWorks is acknowledged to embody best practice in this rapidly developing area. The team draws great strength from its Cornish roots whilst also having a firm presence in the London cultural landscape. The wider company is made up of professional artists from cultures with different performance traditions as well as volunteer participants from local communities, including Kosova.
“when I first made work in the landscape something clicked into place” Bill Mitchell, Director
The company demonstrates a catalytic capacity to convene, to connect and to communicate, believing that community is a simple but profound conjuncture of people and place. Stories of substance rooted in lived experience are the prize WildWorks repeatedly seeks and often find, refreshing the process in each show – building on previous experience whilst seeking new mechanisms for engagement. Volunteers work alongside professional artists who understand the power of performance to bring real change to peoples’ lives. As a result, over the last five years, Wildworks has worked with gospel choirs, surfers, tea dance regulars, North African migrants, the Royal Navy, ex-minders, a young hip-hop group, abseilers and a Hell’s Angels chapter.
MaK representative Fazli Blakçori was invited to be a guest ambassador with the Wildworks production ‘Babel’.
MaK and WildWorks hope to work together in Kosova.
