Community Artist-in-Residence

Jim has been an artist-in-residence on several community projects, bringing together groups from whom the themes and the forms of each project is born. Example projects include:

Brundibar, 2022

Jim was movement director on this project mounted by Opera North’s Young Company. Over 40 teenagers performed Tony Kushner’s adaptation of Hans Krása’s 1938 opera, part of a larger project exploring the Holocaust, resistance, and art.

RSNO’s Young Creatives, 2020-21

Jim spent 18 months with Royal Scottish National Orchestra’s teenage musicians, crafting three projects that drew upon the interests, desires, fears, and dreams of the young people themselves. One of the resulting projects was After Dark, an audio piece based on late-night radio shows, which responded to the shifting sleep patterns and modes of connectivity in the first Covid-19 lockdown. Listen in by clicking the video to the right.

BOYS, 2019-20

Why are boys so tender with each other when they’re young , and why do these relationships often breakdown during puberty? How would a boy teach his own father? The BOYS project began with Niobe Way’s research that young boys’ very tactile friendships break down around puberty. With 15 boys on the cusp of puberty, Jim co-created a piece of dance-theatre based on games and touch. The project was commissioned by Lyra, Edinburgh’s radical theatre by young people.

Der Freischütz, 2017

In this Blackheath Halls Community Opera, Jim co-created choral movement with a diverse set of over 100 community members from around South London, including young people with special needs and adults over the age of 90.