Back to China?

For quite a while, since February 27th in fact, I've been sitting on what could be the most exciting bit of news Border Crossings has had in a very long time. The reason I've been keeping quiet is that it's an EU grant for the Orientations Trilogy, and it's bureaucratically complex. I've kept feeling that if I put it out there, something is bound to go wrong. But I've just heard that the contact is on its way to us, and so it seems it will all happen.

Because we're quite a small organisation, the EU isn't really geared up to dealing with us. But they liked our list of partners, they liked the project.... and so they went for it. The only difficulty was that somebody has to guarantee to pay the pre-funding back if we don't deliver the project! We couldn't - we don't have sufficient resources to guarantee it. I have been searching a lot - finally Collage Arts agreed to be guarantors, and will be coming in to supervise the admin as a result - which is probably just what we need. They've done EU projects before, so they know what they're talking about. They'll be helping me interview potential Producers at the end of the month.

We open up the lines of communication to China. Nick Yu, from SDAC, is excited about the chance to host the devising workshop - but needs to check out just how many people they can actually look after (he's only had directors on their own before). The Shanghai Festival is keen to show Dis-Orientations this autumn, but needs a co-producing venue (possibly SDAC..). So the negotiations begin, and the frustration of nothing being tied down continues and grows. But we're getting somewhere, that's for sure.