Big hArt

On Friday afternoon, I was at Australia House for a presentation by Big hArt from Australia. This is a company we've been close to for some time, ever since we started discussing bringing their amazing production of Ngapartji Ngapartji to Origins last year. We didn't manage it - mainly because it would have involved 50+ flights from Australia, which is pushing it - but now that we are looking at the next Festival, they are also developing a one-man version of the piece, which is altogether more manageable. It's this idea which was shown to us on Friday.

Trevor Jamieson, who was part of our First Nations Advisory Panel and helped us to launch the Festival in that same room in 2007, tells his family history in this show. It's an extraordinary story of destruction and survival - and in this version he is juxtaposed with video footage of interviews with Elders (many of whom actually appeared in the original version). This less formal, less showy version of the show is in many ways more immediate for a British audience than the grand spectacle of the original.

Talking to Scott Rankin afterwards, I get the impression that this is how his thinking is currently moving. The new Big hArt project, with which Trevor will again be involved, is a direct engagement with the mining companies who are ripping up the Aboriginal homelands. He's right, of course - if we just make shows that talk to the converted, we get nowhere. The people who we somehow have to reach are the decision makers, the people with power. As Peter Sellars says about opera - talk to the people you think you don't like.

We're looking at working in partnership with the City of London Festival next year - and it's started me thinking about all those City board rooms.