Developing your Creative Practice: Rosie Heafford
Rosie Heafford applied to DYCP to support her research into taking her choreography to the US. She tells us how the fund helped in the next step of her career.
Rosie is a choreographer who creates dance performances for children and adults. Her work has been performed in libraries, galleries, and outdoor spaces, as well as national and international tours of her productions. She is Dream Artist at Pavilion Dance South West and in 2016 she was shortlisted for the Art Foundation Children’s Theatre Award.
Rosie wanted to develop her network and opportunities internationally by performing at the IPAY (International Performing Arts for Youth) showcase in the USA. After working in the UK and Europe for a number of years, she felt this opportunity would help her to move from performing in small-scale to performing in mid-scale venues and increase her international work. It would also provide a meeting place for networking opportunities, workshops and discussions.
“IPAY is the world’s largest showcase for children and young people’s performance and is an amazing opportunity to meet artists and promoters from around the world.”
Performing at the showcase will raise her profile internationally and help her to develop a network and sector knowledge in the USA. In turn, this will help her to create appropriate partnerships and marketing strategy to support this future work.
After receiving funding, Rosie was able to attend and support IPAY’s showcase of ‘Getting Dressed’ at their annual conference in Philadelphia.
“Before travelling I spent a lot of time in conversation with Holden & Arts Associates preparing for the specific expectations of the American touring market in terms of budgets, audience size and the suitability of my work. Together we developed an information pack tailored to the USA for the show along with print material for my other work which we took to IPAY.”
“This opportunity has been a big step change in my career. My work has been touring nationally since 2013 to small-scale venues. Since 2017 we have started to develop an international market for our work performing in Norway, Dublin, Germany and Sweden. IPAY was an opportunity to think about upscaling my work to perform to theatres of 400-800 seats. Performing at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre in Philadelphia, a 350 seat venue, was the largest venue we have performed in to date. I was delighted with how well this show worked in a bigger venue.”
Rosie’s next step is to continue conversations with Holden and Arts Associates (an American agent) along with all the promoters she met at IPAY to book a tour for spring 2021.
Top Tip
“My advice when applying to DYCP is to apply for an opportunity that will really change things for your practice. Perhaps something out of your comfort zone and that you’ve never done before.”
Thinking of applying?
DYCP supports individuals who are cultural and creative practitioners and want to take time to focus on their creative development.
