Andy Field: Lookout

"Lookout is a one-to-one performance for one adult audience member and one child performer that takes place high up overlooking a town or city. Together the two of them look out at this place and imagine its future.

The first version of Lookout was created for the Arches in Glasgow in 2015, with the first performances happening on the day after the general election, as we all came to terms with a Conservative majority in parliament for the first time in over a decade. Since then the project has been presented in twelve other towns and cities, tracing its way across the UK and beyond as political upheavals and civic tragedies unfolded around it. In London in summer 2017 we stood on the roof of a city-centre skyscraper, gazing out on a panorama of high-rises, only a day after the Grenfell Tower fire had ripped a hole in West London.

Throughout a turbulent two years, the experience of making and remaking Lookout has remained for me something to hold on to amidst the storm – a way of both tying ourselves in to the very old history of cities and projecting ourselves forward into a future well beyond our brief lifespans. Most importantly, however, Lookout has been a way to bring together a remarkable range of people - over 200 children and thousands of audience members across three different continents, from parents and teachers to architects and city councillors - to talk intimately and earnestly about the places they live, the lives they lead and their hopes and fears for the future.

Alongside the performances themselves, we have also been developing an online archive that collects illustrations, photographs, films and audio recordings from each of the cities we have visited, a digital record of all the imagined futures the children have created."

Andy Field

Categories: Report

Date Posted: 24 October 2017