Helen Cole

Helen Cole is Producer of Live Art and Dance at Arnolfini in Bristol. Over the past ten years, she has developed the programme there to become one of the leading performance contexts for Live Art in the UK. She has also created a role as producer, initiating and developing projects such as the biennial Inbetween Time Festival, now in its fourth edition, or the interdisciplinary projects 32000 Points of Light and Whiteplane_2, which she produced outside the structures of Arnolfini itself.

From an early phase of her working life Helen had a sense of herself as a producer and during nearly 20 years of work in the world of contemporary performance she has been piecing together the ways of working, networks, skills, inner resources and critical perspectives to make this a reality. Her entire working career has been in regional UK contexts, an environment which offers her the scale of connection with an audience and the strong sense of community that she seeks. She is well-connected internationally too, and frequently tours the projects she has initiated in the UK and abroad.

She has committed herself to an area of artistic practice that sees itself as on the outside, away from the mainstream, and has created opportunities for its artists and her ideas by embracing fully the possibilities that the organisational structures of Arnolfini offers. At the same time, she has produced projects beyond the organisation's frame, and is now at a point where she is reviewing how these different dimensions of her work intersect and go forward.

It was in 1994 during a discussion event in Manchester that I first heard the word producer applied to the arts. I was in my mid-twenties, a bit bolshy and a dreamer, forever weaving ideas in my head. I was still at an early point in my career and had not as yet gone out and proved myself, so my ideas were still stuck deep in the recesses of my imagination, but something about that discussion left me burning with ambition and opposition. It was a call to action and in hindsight not much stayed the same after that.

When I look back, I can now see that even before 1994 I was moving towards becoming a producer, I just hadn't found the right word for it yet. I was based in Manchester, part of a diverse artistic community which truly believed our city was the centre of the universe. We thought we could do just about anything there, and Manchester became the location of my first attempts at producing, my initial collaborations and influences, and some glorious mistakes. It was here, in those early days, that I first began to question how I worked with artists.

Between 1992 and 1995, I managed two independent companies, Doo Cot and Third Estate. We were prolific and hungry, touring extensively and working hard. I learned how to be tenacious, diplomatic and scary. I learned about funding, touring, managing events and developing audiences as well as the fundamentals of arts administration: how much to squeeze into the back of a van, the difference between a fresnel and a parcan, how to wind up cable, and what venues and hotels to avoid. My time with these artists was invaluable. Together, we made some mad, amazing and awful projects. But then I began to get itchy feet.

I was already questioning my critical position in relation to the work. Short of churning out a good turn of phrase in funding applications or post-show discussions, I had little opportunity to contribute in a creative way. I had a talent for bringing in the money and the gigs, but this didn't feel enough. I wanted to take similar leaps of faith as the artists made. I have never wanted to actually be an artist, but neither did I wish to function solely as the facilitator of others. Even then, I had ideas and ambitions of my own.

Things were changing in Manchester, and as the city regenerated, I set up a new producing company, hAb, alongside a colleague, Tamsin Drury, with whom I shared similar aspirations. We wanted to make ambitious interdisciplinary projects, to help artists shape a work from early beginnings to full realisation. We built arguments for funding, found unusual sites, and fought for permissions. We brought artists together who had never worked with each other. We took over city squares, shopping centres, buses and warehouses. From burning small wooden houses on building sites, to octophonic sound installations in car parks, I gradually moved from being on the edge of the creative heart of a project, to nearer the very centre, where I found I was far happier to be. Here I could begin to test and mould an idea so it could remain reckless but fully realisable. We were good at standing up and arguing hard, and in a few years we achieved a bewildering amount of projects, introducing significant promoters and funding to the work. And then suddenly it just felt like time to move on. I've always had some kind of trust in the magic of that.

In 1996, I was offered a brief but intense opportunity as Senior Producer at Tramway in Glasgow - a steep, critical learning curve which widened forever my ideas of what performance could be. It was the first time I had worked with such an exhilarating international venue, with its multiple and diverse industrial spaces and a programme and audience to match. I worked alongside a truly inspirational programmer, Steve Slater, and was able to develop my own programme for the first time. I developed sensitivity to an audience, and the multiple ways to persuade them to come back again and again. I saw large-scale works that enabled intimacy, installations that used the most cutting-edge of technologies and a participatory work in a full-sized dodgem arcade recreated each night in the theatre. At this time, I had my first job title as Producer, but I wasn't truly functioning in this capacity. I was still watching and learning. Tramway changed everything, giving me a new drive to work with artists, a zeal to programme for audiences, and a scale of ambition I had never imagined was possible before.

In 1997, I was appointed as the Live Art and Dance Programmer at Arnolfini in Bristol. From my early career I have been able to spot untapped potential, and I knew this was a location where I could make things happen that weren't happening elsewhere in the UK. Unusually for a gallery, Arnolfini's commitment to performance had been established in its founding artistic ethos, but the live programme remained a marginal area of activity, and lacked the importance I felt it should hold. From early on, my job was more than just programming. I fought for visibility and development, moving the programme away from bought-in shows, towards commissioning, producing and touring new work.

The spaces and cubby holes of Arnolfini are inspiring enough, yet almost inevitably by 1999 my instincts to move on kicked in again. This time however I decided to take a different tack. Even then I could see that extraordinary things can happen from within the walls of institutions, so actually the most radical move I could make was to stay put and hang on in. I felt if I could find a way to agitate from the edges whilste remaining firmly on the inside, this would be how I could bring the highest level of resources, experience and critical discourse to the artists with whom I worked.

At the same time, it was clear that the work needed to be tried and tested beyond its home location, and the simplest way to do this was to get out on the road whilste bringing that wider audience to us. I initiated Breathing Space in 2000, a commissioning and touring project, putting artists together with producers in unusual combination with an ethos of experimentation at its heart. We have now made and presented over 20 works in the UK and Australia, in conventional arts spaces, disused cinemas, a lecture theatre, a caravan, a dockside, a derelict swimming pool and endless city streets. This wanderlust feels imperative for both artists and producers - to place work in - test and reshape the work as it evolves anew. Again, I guess this is the outsider in me, driving a desire to get away from the security of the institution, whilste perversely, as an insider, I want to bring all that we have learned back home.

The producing methodology I have evolved through Breathing Space and the projects that have followed is a long and delicate process, taking place over numerous conversations and small forays. I have always liked ideas at the early stages, at that point of uncertainty, when the balance between what is possible and what is not is constantly being redrawn. 32000 Points of Light and Whiteplane_2 are works that have emerged from this indefinable alchemy, where I invited artists to undertake small, informal improvisations and some kind of chemistry took hold. As producer, it is my job to recognise this moment, to spot the possibilities, to listen to the dreaming, to replay the thinking, until the work takes shape and becomes real. I am then there to bring that work to an audience and a sector who will test it before it moves on. Both 32000 Points of Light and Whiteplane_2 took over two years to reach fruition. At their start we could not have imagined we would be working with motion simulators and ambisonics. Nor could we have foreseen the different lives of the projects presented in major art spaces in the UK, warehouses in Japan or churches in Mexico City.

And lastly comes the most significant project of all. In 2001 I initiated Inbetween Time. Originally intended as a small, one-off event, Inbetween Time has in fact developed to become a major UK festival where we are able to bring together the incongruities and anomalies that make up the body of international, experimental performance work. It has increased Arnolfini's funding base, collaborations and international profile, and has pervaded the imaginations of all those who connect with it. When are we next going to fill a space with pepper, pig's blood, and petals? Inbetween Time has entered Bristol mythology, it seems, and the solid and certain walls of Arnolfini have shiftedoundations once again.

All these projects, even the early ones, have pushed and pulled me towards my growing realisation as a producer. They each started as a small idea that shone with potential at an early stage, and they have forever changed my approach. I was able to work in my capacity as a producer to get them started and develop them on their path. They would not have evolved as they did without me, and neither they nor my career would be as they are without the institutional back-up from Arnolfini. They would be festering in the backs of our minds somewhere still, potentially never to happen at all.

Arnolfini is a remarkable and unusual institution. It has at turns both supported me, and torn its institutional hair out at my unusual producer-like goings-on, yet there is no doubt that our relationship has been mutually beneficial. Over what is now nearly ten years, I have been remoulding and rewriting, scratching and digging the performance programme into the very fabric of the building, and through the work we do both inside and outside, Arnolfini is now felt to be one of the most important performance contexts in the UK.

So, what's going to happen next? After ten years as an outsider working both within an institution and beyond its boundaries, where does this leave me? I feel at a crossroads, on the brink of something, and I am not sure what shape it will take. The questions and challenges for my future are numerous, but the strategies stay the same. I wish to deepen my approach as a producer, to create a structure that will allow more time to create specialist and extraordinary projects.

Perhaps I am a late developer, but in my view it really does take that long to mature as a producer. Whatever happens next, I will continue to intervene with institutions who invite me, and to be there with the artists at the beginning. Because I believe with all my heart that the right idea can reach fruition, no matter how impossible it may seem, and I know that with the right artists, audience and conditions, I can help make extraordinary things happen that would not be possible without me.